The Foundling by Stacey Halls

 
From Goodreads

London, 1754.

Six years after leaving her illegitimate daughter Clara at London's Foundling Hospital, Bess Bright returns to reclaim the child she has never known. Dreading the worst - that Clara has died in care - the last thing she expects to hear is that her daughter has already been reclaimed - by her. Her life is turned upside down as she tries to find out who has taken her little girl - and why. Less than a mile from Bess' lodgings in the city, in a quiet, gloomy townhouse on the edge of London, a young widow has not left the house in a decade. When her close friend - an ambitious young doctor at the Foundling Hospital - persuades her to hire a nursemaid for her daughter, she is hesitant to welcome someone new into her home and her life. But her past is threatening to catch up with her and tear her carefully constructed world apart.

From the bestselling author of The Familiars, and set against the vibrant backdrop of Georgian London, The Foundling explores families, secrets, class, equality, power and the meaning of motherhood.

My thoughts

This book has been on my NetGalley TBR pile for some time.  I am very slow at getting round to reading them before the books are published.  This book got moved up when it became a quarterly reading group read in an online book group that I have been in for years.

This is the second book that I have read by Stacey Halls.  I read The Familiars by her back in 2019.

Telling the story of Bess who left her baby daughter Clara in a Foundling Hospital and when she went back to claim her young daughter Clara, hoping that she was not going to be told that Clara had passed away instead she was told that her daughter had been claimed.  How was this possible as she had never been to claim Clara, so who had?  Bess is beside herself and does not know where to turn.  

How will Bess find her young daughter, will they ever be reunited and why was she taken?

Not far from where Bess lives a young widow is struggling to care for her young child.  She needs help, not knowing where to turn to, a young Doctor that she is friendly with, tries his best to encourage her to take in help with the young child.  She is loathe to do so, but doesn't know how much more she can cope with.

How will things work out for this young widow and will she take the offer of help or not?

I really enjoyed this book and felt for all the characters really, they all had their issues and reasons for doing what they did.  I can only imagine what mothers had to go through emotionally to give up their child and place it in a Foundling Hospital.  This is a story set in the past, when times were hard and people found it really hard to cope (mind you times aren't great at the moment for a lot of people).  There are so many issues that the story covers, this would make a great reading group read.