The Peach Thief
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
This shimmering middle-grade debut set in 1850s Lancashire, England, explores longing, belonging, and the courage it takes to find your place—and bloom. The night that workhouse orphan Scilla Brown dares to climb the Earl of Havermore’s garden wall, she wants only to steal a peach—the best thing she’s ever tasted in her hard, hungry life. But when she’s caught by the earl’s head gardener and mistaken for a boy, she grabs on to something more: a temporary job scrubbing flowerpots. If she can just keep up her deception, she’ll have a soft bed and food beyond her wildest dreams . . . maybe even peaches. She soon falls in with Phin, a garden apprentice who sneaks her into the steamy, fruit-filled greenhouses, calls her “Brownie,” and makes her skin prickle. At the same time, the gruff head gardener himself is teaching lowly Scilla to make things grow, and she’s cultivating hope with every seed she plants. But as the seasons unfurl, her loyalties become divided, and her secret grows harder to keep. How far will she go to have a home at last? Beautifully crafted with classic middle-grade themes of fate and ambition, identity and personal responsibility, this stunning debut features brisk pacing, crackling dialogue, and deep insight into what makes a garden thrive—and a heart and mind flourish.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Smith's richly detailed debut, set in 1850s England, centers orphaned preteen Scilla Brown, a workhouse runaway. Drawn by the scent of peaches, Scilla, disguised as a boy, sneaks into the Earl of Havermore's walled garden, where she is caught and unexpectedly employed as a pot scrubber, a job that provides her with decent food and a soft bed for the first time in her life. Fueled by a growing fascination with gardening, Scilla—now going by Seth—begins to dream of becoming a permanent employee and, eventually, a gardener. Scilla's secret—jeopardized by her growing breasts, the onset of her menstrual cycle, and her unfamiliar feelings for gardener-in-training Phineas Blake, who takes her under his wing—keeps the tension and drama steady throughout. Scilla's personal integrity, often hard-won, makes her a sympathetic protagonist, but occasional flashbacks and passing references slowly, yet never fully, reveal aspects of her traumatic past, resulting in gaps that may muddle readers' understanding of her entire story. An author's note adds helpful context about English workhouses of the period and includes extensive historical grounding for Smith's immersive depiction of life in a mid-19th-century English estate and its gardens. All characters read as white except for an India-born adult. Ages 8–12.
