At the Sign of the Sugared Plum by Mary Hooper

Only one year after the city suffered such terrible losses during the Plague, London is recovering and Hannah convinces her parents that, with her younger sister Anne’s help, she can return to the city and manage the sweetmeats shop on her own. This gripping account of London’s Great Fire of 1666 is a worthy companion to At the Sign of the Sugared Plum. ‘Mary Hooper is another writer to watch’ The Independent A brilliant new departure from this best selling author.

Based on much research, Mary Hooper tellingly conveys how the atmosphere in London changes from a disbelief that the plague is anything serious, to the full blown horror of the death carts and being locked up in effect to die if your house is suspected of infection. Instead of giving Hannah a hearty welcome, Sarah is horrified that Hannah did not get her message to stay away the Plague is taking hold of London. Hannah does not however get the reception she expected from her sister Sarah. ‘Wouldn’ t think you’d want to go there Times like this, I would have thought your sister would try and keep you away.’ Hannah is oblivious to Farmer Price’s dark words, excited as she is about her first ever trip to London to help her sister in her shop ‘The Sugared Plum’, making sweetmeats for the gentry.

‘You be going to live in the city, Hannah?’ Farmer Price asked, pushing his battered hat up over his forehead.

The Remarkable Life and Times of Eliza Rose (2006).

The Peculiar Power of Tabitha Brown (1998).

'About this title' may belong to another edition of this title. Kay WeismanĬopyright © American Library Association. Historical fiction buffs will find much to like, and classes studying the period will find this an excellent resource, especially when paired with James Cross Giblin's When Plague Strikes (1995), or Jim Murphy's An American Plague, which brings the tragedy of an epidemic closer to home. Quotes from Samuel Pepys' Diary head each chapter, and appended notes and a glossary add to the authenticity of the story. Secondary characters-among them an apothecary and his apprentice-help to broaden Hannah's experiences and enhance the many setting and historical details. Hooper fills her story with the sights, sounds, and smells of seventeenth-century London: heads decorate London Bridge, and the putrid aroma of rotting meat and kitchen slops pervades the air. But the bubonic plague begins taking hold, and although Hannah enjoys the excitement of big-city life, the realities of the epidemic soon become impossible to ignore. In the summer of 1665, Hannah travels to London to live with her older sister, Sarah, the owner of a sweetmeats shop.

At the Sign of the Sugared Plum by Mary Hooper