THE DYING ART OF LIFE

In shoeless’ novel, an American-born daughter of Nancy and Mr. Bumble—two characters from Charles Dickens’ classic 1838 novel, Oliver Twist—returns to Victorian London seeking answers about her family’s past, and her own destiny.

Olivia Cranehill arrives in the Smithfield district from Upstate New York, intent on tracing the life of the mother she never knew. Raised by her adoptive father, Sakata, a former Japanese soldier-turned-restaurateur, Olivia has a disciplined martial bearing and the curved blade of a wakizashi, hidden beneath her clothes. Her first encounters in London set the tone for a tale that blends mystery, nostalgia, and quiet revelation. Olivia learns pieces of Nancy’s story from her mother’s old friend, Bet, including her self-imposed captivity with the violent Bill Sikes, her fierce loyalty to Fagin’s boys, and the talismanic objects she left behind. When Bet produces Nancy’s white, knitted shawl, Olivia feels “as if they were just one touch apart, fingertips reaching across time.” An engraved pocket watch becomes yet another thread tying mother and daughter together. The author expands the Dickensian tapestry by weaving Olivia’s own trans-Atlantic upbringing into the plot. Interludes recall her training with Sakata (“You must turn away, be meek and live for tomorrow….sometimes, to lose is to win”) and her eventual mastery of the sword, illustrated in a quiet but deadly scene in which she decapitates a wasp in midflight. These details lend her a self-possession that’s rare among Dickens’ female characters. The plot widens when Olivia sets out to find Sir Oliver Twist, the boy her father once helped, who’s now risen to aristocracy. Her walk through the capital is as much a tour of Victorian contrasts as it is a narrative progression, rich with street-level vignettes and historical texture. The novel succeeds as both homage and expansion: familiar names—Fagin, Sikes, Twist—surface in altered roles, reframed by time and circumstance. Olivia herself is a magnetic protagonist: disciplined, physically formidable, yet emotionally vulnerable in her search for belonging and truth.

A skillfully rendered literary return, anchored by a hero worth following.