This book is the WINNER of the 2006 CYBIL AWARDS in Middle Grade Fiction
Singing in the outhouse is really only a form of revenge. Mostly it keeps Mary Maud Flynn from freezing out there. The Battle Hymn of the Republic is a warming, spirited chorus, but she is just as glad to be interrupted by the lovely Hyacinth Hawthorne who unlocks her from her cold and smelly prison, and decides to adopt her and take her away from The Barbary Asylum for Female Orphans.
Maud suddenly has everything – new clothes, books, a gorgeous room of her own, and a home with Hyacinth’s sisters Judith, Victoria, and their speechless, lumpen and strange maid, Muffet. Her long-lost brother finds her and comes to call, and Maud is filled with the sense that she has it better that he does, now that she’s been adopted. It seems like she should be thrilled, but not everything is as it seems…
A Drowned Maiden’s Hair is a humorous, pathos-filled piece of turn-of-the-twentieth-century history when the American public was in the throes of an obsession with spiritualism and, as P.T. Barnum notably said, a sucker was born every minute. Maud is a vivacious, determined and lovable character whose observations on the world around her make this a truly enjoyable book.
