Gower Street
Set against the sprawling London of the early years of the last century, Gower Street magnificently re-creates the turbulent life of the theater and the medical world of the time as it follows the careers of two ambitious "guttersnipes" who seek to make their fortunes: Abel Lackland, whose foray into bodysnatching awakens him to an interest in the sinister new art of surgery, and Lilith Lucas, born Lil Burnell, who will let nothing stand in the way of her rising to be queen of the English stage. Rich in historical detail, the novel is filled with a vast array of both real and marvelously imagined characters. Jesse Constam, rising out of the underworld stronghold of the Seven Dials to become a gentleman and foster father to Abel; his stepdaughter, Dorothea, determined that her love for the resistant Abel will prevail; Astley Cooper, daring and gifted surgeon defying the existing medical code; criminals; landed gentry; the demimonde of the theater-all are part of the great panorama that is Gower Street. And brooding over all, the Seven Dials, the criminal heart of London, out of which Abel and Lilith sprang and to whose raucous, vital and dangerous world they find themselves forever strangely bound. While complete and marvelously satisfying in itself, Gower Street is only the first in a saga that will trace the course of two great dynasties one theatrical, one medical-founded by Lilith Lucas and Abel Lackland.