1–What is the title of your latest release? A TOKEN OF LOVE 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? A Token of Love is a dual-time novel set in London in 1885 and contemporary time. It’s a family story of heartache and hope—truth and justice as a determined aunt and a dedicated journalist team up to search for her young niece who has been abducted from the Foundling Hospital, London’s oldest children’s charity home. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? My last nine novels have been set in England in the late Victorian and Edwardian Eras, and my readers have come to expect stories set in those time periods. In my research, I saw a painting of a woman giving her baby into the care of the Foundling Hospital. That image gripped my heart. As I started the research, I learned the mothers sometimes left small items, which they called tokens, as identifiers, in the hope that if their situation changed, they might be able to return and reclaim their child. Victorian London is filled with interesting people, customs, and sites. It’s a great time and place to set a story! 4–Would you…

Many readers are familiar with the Orphan Trains that took impoverished children from large cities in the East to live with families in small towns and on farms in the Midwest. But did you know during that same time period more than 100,000 poor and orphaned British children were sent from England to Canada as British Home Children? This child emigration scheme was started by those who had good intentions and who hoped to clear the streets, children’s homes, and workhouses of orphaned and abandoned children in England’s overcrowded cities and towns. The children were promised a better life in Canada, but sadly that was not the case for all of them. Most of these children were not adopted and welcomed into families. Instead, the boys were taken in as indentured farm laborers and the girls worked as household servants called domestics, even at very young ages. Those who took them in simply filled out a form and paid a small fee. There was little screening and often no follow up. Because of this, and prevailing attitudes of the time, many of these children suffered neglect and mistreatment. Many slept in barns or other outbuildings and were not given adequate…