Misfortune -- Wesley Stace

It took me ages to settle on the following passage to introduce this book.  Imagine my dismay when I realized that the same passage was on the back of the book jacket.  But I'm using it anyway, because it's great:

You know who I am.  But perhaps you don't know my name: Rose Old.  I was unwanted at birth and thrown away, evidence best disposed of.  If you consider that, bloodily new to the world, I was bound for a dusty grave and that I was saved only by a distracted boy and a stray dog, it's a miracle that I lived an hour, let alone as long as I have.  Who'd have imagined I'd live to tell the tale, as it were?  Fortune patted me on the head at an early age, but it wasn't all walks and treats.  We had a complicated relationship.

What else do you know?  Well, you know I'd alive now, unless I'm telling this story from beyond the grave.  I'm Old but I'm not that old and I am not going to die in my story (unless I do it with the last full stop -- that would be acceptable; after all, I haven't finished yet and I can't see the future any more clearly than you can). 

Rose Old, alive.

In 1820, a newborn was rescued from the rubbish heap by Lord Geoffrey Loveall, the richest man in England.  Lord Geoffrey, having never recovered from the death of his younger sister at age five, took the baby in as his own daughter.  The only problem (which Lord Loveall ignored) was that the baby was a boy.

The secret was well-kept, even from the child, until Rose hit puberty.

It's a fabulous book.  It has everything: an English manor, a mystery, secrets, a love story, a librarian, horrible relatives, Ovid, an escape, a ghost, madness, a homecoming...  I was so attached to the characters, especially Rose, that I cried when the book ended.  The Appendix, excerpts from a modern guidebook to Love Hall, made me cry even more.  But it made me laugh, too, because I knew the story behind the objects described.  I knew that Rose and the rest of the Lovealls were all fictional, but I Love Hall became so real to me that I had to double-check.  (All fiction, unfortunately). 

For a novel by any author, it'd be impressive.  For a first novel by a supposedly unknown author, even more so.  But Wesley Stace is actually John Wesley Harding.  So he's not really unknown.  But he published it under his own name, rather than his known stage name.  Which I think is really cool.