Review: Blackberry & Wild Rose

Blackberry & Wild Rose by Sonia Velton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A novel of historical fiction centering on the Huguenot silk weavers of Spitalfields, England, Blackberry and Wild Rose gives us the story of two very different women. Sarah Kemp was sent to London to find a better life by her mother and promptly tricked, druggedm and trafficked by the madam of a brothel. It's years later that Esther Thorel, the wife of a wealthy master weaver, enters Sarah's life and "rescues" her by giving her a job as her lady's maid. Esther is a frustrated artist who wants to design beautiful silks (like the blackberry and wild rose print of the title) but her husband belittles her efforts and wants her to stay out of his weaving business. Yet Esther's hopes of designing begin to blossom when a talented protege of her husband, Bisby Lambert, helps her set her ideas into silk. Sarah quickly becomes bored with her low salary and dismal work tidying up after her mistress and emptying her chamber pot and pushes back against what she perceives as the hypocrisy of the Thorel household. With Sarah and Esther on a seeming collision course of ideology, Velton takes the story of these two determined women in surprising directions.

This is a compelling story about the historical rights of women and the character of Esther is loosely inspired by Anna Maria Garthwaite, an eighteenth-century silk designer whose artistry resembled that of paintings. The audiobook, narrated by Esther Wane and Shiromi Arserio, is a beautiful production.

I received a Digital Review Copy of this novel from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

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