Lilli de Jong
A Novel
Library Journal Best Historical Fiction 2017
“A powerful, authentic voice for a generation of women whose struggles were erased from history—a heart-smashing debut that completely satisfies.”
—Jamie Ford, New York Times bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
Philadelphia, 1883. Twenty-three-year-old Lilli de Jong is pregnant and alone—abandoned by her lover and banished from her Quaker home. She gives birth at a charity for wronged women, planning to give up the baby. But the power of their bond sets her on a completely unexpected path. Unwed mothers in 1883 face staggering prejudice, yet Lilli refuses to give up her baby girl. Instead, she braves moral condemnation and financial ruin in a quest to keep the two of them alive.
Lilli confides this…
$28.00
July 10, 2018
JANET BENTON is a writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere. She has co-written and edited historical documentaries for television. She holds a B.A. from Oberlin College and an M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. For over twenty years, she has run an editorial business and a writing workshop in Philadelphia, where she lives with her husband and daughter. Lilli de Jong is her first novel.
