Angel of Brooklyn

the long version

"In January 1914, Jonathan Crane returns home to his remote village in the north of England with a rare thing - a beautiful, glamorous American bride. Beatrice struggles to adapt to this cold, grey place - so different from the bright lights of Coney Island - and tries to befriend the young women who are her new neighbours. They are in awe of her - her foreignness, her blonde hair, her smart clothes." "Beatrice, born and raised in Normal, Illinois, is a woman with a past. She tells them extraordinary stories of her father, an amateur taxidermist, of her brother, a preacher, and of her friends back home in Brooklyn, but she will take the story of how she became the Angel of Brooklyn to her grave." "When the men head off to fight in the Great War, the women are left alone, the differences between them grow, and their fear and loneliness feed the jealousy they harbour for this mysterious newcomer. The years pass, the men are still not home and Beatrice finds her old life catches up with her, here in Anglezarke, Lancashire - and, in a dramatic climax, proves to be her undoing."--BOOK JACKET.