The Dress Lodger

Sheri Holman

This second novel by Sheri Holman draws you in right from the moment you see the cover, with the brilliant blue dress that Gustine is often wearing. But the dress lodger is only one small part of Gustine - she is also a pottery assistant, a mother, and a body snatcher. Gustine is one of London's impossibly poor, and she, like the others just scraping by, is at the mercy of a cholera epidemic and a government that believes quarantine will stop the sickness before it reaches the more affluent society. The quarantine serves only to enforce the mistaken idea the poor have that the rich are out to kill them all, and then to experiment on the bodies. This is where Henry comes in, always searching for respectability in his chosen field of medicine, and yet compelled to unearth the bodies he so desperately needs to teach his eager anatomy students. The story of Gustine and Henry is remarkable.