Rag-and-Bone Christmas

Name: Rag-and-Bone Christmas
Rating: 4.63 (7069 reviews)

by Dilly Court

Amazon

4.6(7,069)

Paradise Row, London, December 1865. When her father falls ill, Sally Suggs takes over his work as a rag-and-bone collector to keep food on the family table. She enters a trade dominated by men and quickly finds herself competing with the persistent Finn Kelly.

The family’s horse, Flower, is their only valuable possession, making Sally a target for black-market traders operating through London’s poorer districts. As Christmas approaches, she must seek help in unexpected places to defend both the horse and the household that depends upon it.

The rag-and-bone trade places Sally inside the informal economy of Victorian London, where discarded household goods can be resold, repaired or exchanged by people living close to poverty. Flower is both companion and capital: without the horse the family loses its ability to work. The Christmas setting sharpens the contrast between seasonal charity and the precarious livelihoods hidden behind more prosperous streets.