In her impressive debut, author Judith Terry

presents a delightful "belowstairs" view of

Jane Austen s timeless novel Mansfield Park.

From Austen s invisible and unnamed host

of Bertram family servants, Terry chooses

a plucky narrator in Jane Hartwell, who

becomes lady s maid to the younger Miss

Bertram.

While the Bertram sisters engage in a

neck-and-neck pursuit of the handsome:

Henry Crawford in front parlors, and pretty

lane fends off the lecherous advances of the

son of the house somewhere in between, the

servants are entertaining dangerous notions

of democracy and revolution in the back

kitchens. Through it all, Jane Hartwell offers

her own shrewd observations of the events of

that memorable summer--and of the world

beyond the protective walls of Mansfield

Park: the world that Austen omitted

In one of the surprising twists of Version and

Diversion, Jane is discovered in the arms of a

secret lover. After setting the household afire

with scandal, she escapes the Wrannies of

Mrs Norris and the tantrums of Miss Julia

only to be hounded through the streets of

London by ruthless bounty hunters and a

vicious band of outlaws Jane learns to sur-