The Last Pearl

When Jem Baillie returned home from a hard day of work, his mother told him of her fortune in finding a pearl in a calico bag which was in her dead husband’s possessions. Jem was furious – all his life his father had been searching for that rarest of pearls. Jem was with his father when he found it in the Tay River in Perthshire, Scotland in 1879 - it was the last pearl he had discovered and was Jem’s inheritance. Now the beautiful white pearl they’d named Queenie had been stolen; Jem was determined he would find the scoundrel if it was the last thing he did.

In York, Greta Costello lived with her mother Sadie, sister Kitty and brother Tom – their lives were hard since Greta’s father had passed and her mother worked from dawn to dusk doing laundry and other menial tasks for pennies. When Greta began working with old Saul Abrahams in his jewellery shop he could see she would be a good apprentice. Her eye for detail and love of pearls set him to teach her to be a pearl stringer. Greta was happy and excited to learn and Saul was a kind and gentle teacher.

When Eben Slinger entered Greta’s life she was still a naïve and sensitive young woman – Eben was a pearl dealer and had recently opened his own Pearl Emporium in York. To obtain a job even on the lowest rung of the ladder in his shop was a dream come true for Greta. But was it all as good as it seemed? Could her future and that of her family be looking much brighter now? Dare she hope?

The Last Pearl by Leah Fleming is a wonderful tale of false hope, revenge, and the mistreatment of one human to another. It’s a coming of age novel showing the strength and courage of a young woman who had more than her fair share of loss and heartache. As the novel moves through the years and across the oceans, the love of family and friends is a constant. I have no hesitation in highly recommending The Last Pearl which I thoroughly enjoyed.

With thanks to NetGalley for this ecopy to read in exchange for my honest review.