Bessie Costrell

“You’ll never leave it wi’ Bessie?” asks the dying Eliza—and John Bolderfield, for all his years of hard-won caution, cannot promise her.

On an August evening in the chalk-hill village of Clinton Magna, John is facing his last harvest after fifty-six years of work—and the loss of the woman who has shared his cottage. Eliza’s warning concerns his savings: she wants him to entrust them to Saunders, not his niece Bessie. But John remembers Bessie’s merry heart and kindness, even as he knows she has never been careful with money. With a new life looming and trust at stake, will he heed the one person who has always tried to steer him right?

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