HETTY is an abandoned baby. After being fostered by a kind family she is returned to the Foundling Hospital.

There are no more cuddles, the other girls are often harsh and the uniform doesn’t include drawers!

She does get an education, enough to eat and training for domestic service, but Hetty doesn’t want to be a servant. She is desperate to find her mother.

Will life outside the institution be easier? Moving, almost painful tale of Victorian hard times (and times were really hard – our heroine encounters not the modern child’s dilemmas of divorce and broken friendships but starvation and death) told with Wilson’s usual immediacy and empathy.

Ages 8+