Shadows of the Workhouse by Jennifer Worth

This is the follow-up to Jennifer Worth's best selling book "Call the Midwife".  If you a fallen in love with the TV show, this book will be a very enjoyable read. Even if you have never seen "Call the Midwife", "Shadow of the Workhouse " stands alone as an excellent vision of life in the 1950s in the poor area of London known as "Poplar". 

Jennifer Leigh is working as a midwife in Poplar, London and is based at Nonnatus House with the Sisters of St Raymond Nonnatus an Anglican order. This is a pseudonym for the real name of the sisters and the house. She spends some time talking about those she works with Sr. Monica Joan, Sr Julienne, St Evangelina, Trixie and Chummy. The workhouse affected the lives of many people she touches. 

Workhouses were part of life in England for more than 100 years. The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 was written to make sure that the poor could not get relief unless they went to live in the workhouses that were set up. They were segregated by sex and families were separated. They were required to work to get the meager food and scant accommodations. People would rather die in the street than go to a workhouse and many did. 

Rules in the workhouses were harsh and it created a dependent population who were ill-equipped to survive in the outside world. Jennifer introduces us to some of the victims of this system and how they managed in the world of East-end London after the workhouses closed. 

If you remember Jens relationship with Mr. Collett from "Call the Midwife" you will delight in the wonderful details that we get in last third of the book called The Old Soldier. Part II deals with Sr Monica Joan and her brush with the law. 

I absolutely loved this book and it kept me very engaged throughout. I went so far as to order two more of her books. 

America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie

If like me you are addicted to history, this book is a must. It is eminently readable and was well researched. I am a stickler, even in historical fiction, that the facts be meticulously stuck to and when I fact-checked things I questioned, I found that the authors had been painstaking in sticking to the main truth. Of course, conversations must be invented but I found them believable and I had a very hard time putting this book down.

This is the story of Thomas Jefferson told through the eyes of his beloved elder daughter, Patsy. Since the reality is that it was she who shaped his legacy through her editing of his papers and the destruction of anything that she didn't feel fit the narrative she was trying to create, it gives us a chance to fill in a few blanks that she is responsible for.

That Thomas Jefferson was one of the great men of the American Revolution is unquestionable but he was a flawed individual who was a slave owner and at times all too self-centered to be a really good father and husband. That he killed his wife through constant pregnancy is doubtlessly true and calling it love doesn't diminish the truth. That he fathered many children on her half-sister a slave is also left in little doubt though no mention is found in Jefferson's official papers.

What I loved about the book was the relationship of Sally Hemings and her niece Patsy, which seems quite natural in even though we are left in little doubt that Patsy knew about her father and Sally.

Through it all, we get to know the man behind the legend and the women who were a part of his life.

This was one of my favorite books of all time and I highly recommend it.