Candle in the Dark — Helen Cannam

Reviews of print edition: 'Helen Cannam has created a wonderful set of characters set in the best and worst of times.' Sharon Griffiths, Northern Echo July 1993
'Helen Cannam writes in an engaging way...making good use of a turbulent era in history with the terror of the guillotine and few women's rights.' Publishing News April 1993
At sixteen, Isabella Milburn's world has been destroyed. Pregnant following a brutal rape, her deep sense of guilt is reinforced by every member of her devoutly Catholic family, apart from her beloved grandmother. At their bidding she is to be sent to France, to give birth in secret and then to enter a Paris convent, where by a life of prayer she may hope to find redemption.
Bewildered by grief and shame, she leaves her Northumberland home, with all its memories of a free and happy childhood, and sets out for France. But already the storm clouds of Revolution are gathering over that country.
A year later, in July 1789, at the very moment when Isabella takes the veil, the storm breaks beyond the convent walls. A new world has begun in the streets of Paris, though within the convent it seems that nothing has changed. But can the convent stand against the fury of the Revolution? What new possibilities will the future bring? And what of the child she was forced to abandon?
Faced with the consequences of the hardest choice of her life, with heartache and danger, Isabella finds herself in a terrifying new world, where she must learn to fight for survival, to make friends and above all to love.