Sean McMahon

A Work In Progress

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This powerful historical novel vividly evokes London in 1842 and the terrifying plight of 13-year-old Maggie Power and her younger brother Tom. With their mother dead and father unjustly imprisoned because he's a Chartist -- a group fighting for the rights of the working class -- the pair is left to endure a bleak existence as street children. Living in a shack and scrounging the river banks for discarded items they can sell for food assures them certain death either by starvation or disease. But they do have one recourse and in desperation turn to a former friend of their father, Mr Turner. Turner takes Maggie and Tom under his wing, but is then murdered by two of their father's enemies. Now fearing for their lives, the children fall in with a rough gang of delinquents who promise them protection in exchange for criminal cooperation. As their young lives become one bad experience after another, they learn that things are seldom what they seem and that few people are trustworthy. Fine characterization -- at least for Maggie -- and skilled pacing make this a real page-turner. Publishers Weekly

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