Daughters Of The Mill — Terri Dulong

Second book in the Lost Souls series, Daughters of the Mill begins in 1875 spanning four decades, taking the reader from the textile city of Lowell, Massachusetts to the coastal town of Salem, north of Boston.

Seventeen-year old Charlotte Hunter is banished from the family estate in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts and forced to relinquish her illegitimate daughter for adoption. She becomes a mill girl at the Boott Cotton Mills in Lowell, sharing a room at the corporation boardinghouse with three other young women, which leads to lifelong friendships, betrayal and love. Meeting Byron Winslow, an affluent attorney in Lowell and his sister, Elista, a registered nurse and strong advocate for women's rights, transports Charlotte along a path to her destiny. Like thread from the mills, Daughters is woven together producing tightly bound connections.

Rich in historical detail and geographical setting, the story focuses strongly on women's issues of that era combined with the limitation that society imposed.