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Susan Rose isn't the average protagonist: she's scheming, promiscuous, plump, and she is also smart, funny, tender, and entirely lovable. Like many lower-class women of Victorian England, she was born into a world that offered very few opportunities for the poor and unlovely. But Susan is the kind of plucky heroine who seeks her fortune, and finds it ... with some help from, well, her breasts. Susan, you see, is a professional wet nurse; she breast-feeds the children of wealthy women who can't or won't nurse their own babies.
But when her own child is sold by her father and sent to a London lady who had recently lost a baby, Susan manages to convince his new foster mother, Mrs. Norbert, to hire her as a wet nurse. Once reunited with her son, Susan discovers the Norbert home to be a much more sinister place than she'd ever expected. Dark and full of secrets, its master is in India, and the first baby who died there did so under very mysterious circumstances. Susan embarks on a terrifying journey to rescue her son before he meets the same fate.
"Susan's a vibrant character, at once sweet and scheming, and given to such a crass frankness that even readers wary of historicals may want to give this a look." - Publishers Weekly
"Periodic set pieces illustrating reasons for surrogate suckling reflect exhaustive research but interrupt the story's flow. Susan is such an appealing narrator and heroine, however, that readers will cheer on her quest for a true home. An engaging romp propelled by Susan's infectious voice and determined resilience." - Kirkus Reviews
"Starred Review. Susan is blatantly immoral, but readers will be charmed by her lively voice. ... Recommended for fans of Philippa Gregory, although this novel is lighter fare." - Library Journal
"I really loved this book. Erica Eisdorfer managed to completely vanish into the voice of her really appealing narrator—the plucky, somewhat randy, always sympathetic, and certainly never boring professional wet nurse, Miss Susan Rose." - Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love
This information about The Wet Nurse's Tale was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Erica Eisdorfer was born and raised in Durham, North Carolina, and graduated from Duke University. She was the book reviewer for WUNC, an NPR affiliate, for eight years. Eisdorfer has managed the Bull's Head Bookshop, the trade bookstore on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for twenty years.
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