"She knew every time she created something beautiful, she was declaring something of her own— independence, value, creativity"
1889 Calcutta, India. What an interesting story. Ottilie is a Indian-British young lady with a talent for beetle-wing embroidery, a skill handed down for generations. She was not accepted by society, on either side of her heritage. "No matter how far she ran, she couldn’t escape the narrative God had been fashioning for her—a story of constant loss and never belonging." She had lost her father and two siblings to cholera, and then later her mother was killed, leaving Ottilie to care for her grandmother and young brother. Her mother had supported them with sewing and embroidery and she tried to. Then their British relatives send a representative to take her little brother to England as he had become heir of the family estate. An estate their father had walked away from. You can feel Ottilie's fragility and her strength throughout, as well as her struggle with faith, since her grandmother had died too. But the safety of England from cholera made her accept their going there. Unfortunately society in general there did not accept her and even her relatives treated her terribly, and Everett the young man who had been sent to take them to England. They all struggle to coexist, and when her brother is sent away to school, she leaves the estate to be near him and takes a job in a dress design shop,. This is also a story of the poor conditions women worked in to produce high fashion for the elite. Excellent read! A lot to learn.
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