Painted Horses

Julia Kelly’s Painted Horses is a historical novel about a mother and daughter living under false names in a Victorian seaside town after rescuing a disabled child from an abusive institution. Alongside the family drama, it follows the growing love between two young women divided by class but united by their desire to escape the futures other people have chosen for them.

The novel opens with an unidentified dark-haired young man sitting in a nightgown in a dim room. Holding a scrap of wool in one hand, he rocks and hums while tearing newspaper into tiny pieces that fall around him like golden snow. His identity becomes clear later: he is Jamie, the supposedly dead son whom Eleanor Ashcombe has stolen back from an institution.

Eleanor and her daughter arrive before dawn at Rosedale House in Cove, using the surname Williams. Martha is actually Marianne Martha Ashcombe, the daughter of Sir Thomas Ashcombe, a wealthy London physician. Their new house is shabby and cold compared with their former home, and their financial position forces Martha to work as a parlour maid at the Grand Hotel.