The strange and entrancing story of a young woman trapped in a
ramshackle English playhouse--and the mysterious figure who threatens
the theater's very survival
The year is 1901. England's beloved queen has died, and her aging son
has finally taken the throne. In the eastern city of Norwich, bright and
inquisitive young Edith Holler spends her days among the boisterous
denizens of the Holler Theatre, warned by her domineering father that
the playhouse will literally tumble down if she should ever leave its
confines. Fascinated by tales of the city she knows only from afar, she
decides to write a play of her own: a stage adaptation of the legend of
Mawther Meg, a vicious figure said to have used the blood of countless
children to make the local delicacy known as Beetle Spread. But when her
father suddenly announces his engagement to a peculiar, imposing woman
named Margaret Unthank, heir to the actual Beetle Spread fortune, Edith
scrambles to protect her father, the theater, and her play--the one
thing that's truly hers--from the newcomer's sinister designs.
Teeming with unforgettable characters and illuminated by the author's
trademark fantastical illustrations, Edith Holler is a surprisingly
modern fable of one young woman's struggle to escape her family's
control--and to reveal inconvenient truths about the way children are
used.
