http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/867514

The Foundling

Five-year-old Joy Briggs is a valuable commodity in the child-brothels of Victorian London, and to Jack Riddles, the burglar who breaks into her parents' opulent home, she is a haul well worth having. But in the hue and cry following the robbery Riddles abandons the young girl, deaf and so deemed stupid, in a canal tunnel. To his distress, for the child's silent knowingness has touched him, she is gone on his return. Though haunted by the girl, Riddles believes she must have drowned, and the grim-faced Scotland Yard men who attempt to placate her outraged parents are sure she is lost to the city's vice-infested underworld. But they are wrong. For Joy has been found by a family of canal folk who bring her up as their own. As Joy reaches womahhood, however, it becomes clear that her past cannot let her live in peace.

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