Only a Violet from My Mother's Grave

Before he was famous, she knew him. In the red autumn of 1888, secluded by the four walls of her dismal room against the choking air of Whitechapel, Mary Kelly sits to compose a lone letter to a lover long past. But what she creates instead is a clear and moving look at her own life as a servant girl in Yorkshire, and chronicles her all-too-easy descent into the disreputable and unfortunate underbelly of London. At the fore of her memoirs is a startlingly open, deep, and, albeit unconsummated, passionate connection she forges with the introverted young master; a man as ignorant and unskilled in matters of the heart as he would be adept and expert at the art of detection years after Mary had parted ways with him. The fateful night of November 9, 1888 concludes Mary Kelly's record, and closes with an unexpected but fervent encounter that brings a kindling of hope for a brighter tomorrow; a hope that is doomed by fate and the cold stalking of a mad man widely know as Jack.