Review of "The Glass Virgin" by Catherine Cookson

Young Anabella Lagrange has been raised as a lady. Her mother dotes on her. Her father is a figure both of fear and love to her. The facts as they come out are jolting. Mother has the money and father is a brute who has been losing money all through the marriage.

When the truth comes out about Anabella's true parentage she runs away with the stable worker. He is a handsome Irishman with a Spanish name who taught Anabella to get over her fear of horses when she was very young. Then he taught her to ride as well as her father demanded..

So the little lady falls to the bottom of the social cast in an early time in England where the lower classes are despised and worked for their keep with many cruel families.

Little Anabella grows up and finds love with her handsome companion runaway, who is really not Spanish, as she is really not an aristocrat. Not much goes smoothly for them and after several years of barely surviving, several deaths, and a couple of murders it all finally works out.

Lots of nasty people in all classes here as well as a tale that is well told but nothing new. The glass part of this virgin refers to her early family's ownership of a glass factory.

Very readable, but also very predictable.