THE SILVER BONES OF FRANCES WINTER

I swear I can hear the creak and crack of my bones growing in the night The weight of them a whale washed up on the shore the rusting carcass of a ship My growth is an unstoppable force impossible to contain Where will it end That is forever my question At eight years old Frances is almost the same height as her father by sixteen she is over six feet tall As she continues to grow to an extraordinary height Frances seeks a way to reduce her size and struggles not to lose herself in the process desperate to remain hidden while longing to be seen and loved for who she is all of her But the streets of Victorian London are not an easy place to be a woman least of all one as striking as Frances Wooed by the showman of a questionable theatre troupe taken in by shrewd spiritualists and charmed by a collection of hedonistic Pre Raphaelites Frances must reckon with what it means to inhabit a body that does not conform grappling with how the world sees her versus who she is discovering herself to be