"The Tailor's Daughter" by Janice Graham

The intriguing thing about historical fiction, such as this marvelous story here, is its characteristic to draw a reader into the period the story is set.  Veda Grenfeld is the deaf daughter of a tailor of England’s 1860s; but she is also a heroine for women of any age, never permitting her disability to restrain her ambition in mastering the tailor trade nor succumbing to the rigid rules of society that frown upon a mixing of the classes and any woman who supplants the positioning of a man.  She charms everyone with her beauty and dazzles them with her talents.  Easily this impressive woman could be cousin to Hardy’s Tess Durbyfield or a descendent of Austen’s Elizabeth Bennett