These Shallow Graves

Jo Montfort has all the comforts that come with being a young lady from an aristocratic Manhattan family, including fine clothes, servants, and a beautiful home.  Yet her desire to become a journalist like her hero Nelly Bly appears closed because there is but one overwhelming expectation for women of her social class – to marry well and produce children.   In any case, Jo doesn’t have much time to ponder this, because after her father dies amid mysterious circumstances, she sets out to investigate and follows leads that take her into the dangerous underbelly of New York City.

 

Though this story has a familiar plotline - determined misfit challenges societal norms and finds her own way – this is not a by-the-numbers thriller with yet another (yawn) butt-kicking heroine. It’s an intelligent, extraordinarily well-detailed mystery with a great feel for the contrasts between the rich and poor that so defined the Gilded Age.  And Jo herself is a fully believable character.  In the hands of a less skilled author, she might have come across as a modern high school senior who’d traveled across time and splashed down at high tea, her 21st century belief system fully intact.  But Jo is a thoroughgoing Victorian and her struggle to become a more mature, compassionate, and independent person is hard-fought and, finally, well-earned.

 

Read this along with The Hired Girl by Laura Amy Schlitz for a look at the Gilded Age aristocracy from a servant’s perspective, or try Jane Eagland’s Wildthorn for the story of another ambitious Victorian girl who really gets in trouble for being herself.