Black Silk and Sympathy, 2024

SYDNEY, 1865. Seventeen-year-old Tatiana Caldwell travels from London to make a new life. Her path leads her to Crowe Funeral Services, where she apprentices under the tutelage of Titus Crowe, the enigmatic owner. Tatty finds herself drawn to the fascinating conventions of the funeral trade – plumed horses and processions, mutes and mortuary trains, flowers and finery – as well as the more visceral new practice of embalming. Soon she marries, and after the sudden death of her husband, Titus, she becomes Sydney's first female undertaker. Her hard-won stability is shattered when Elias Nuttall, a ruthless rival in the funeral trade, accuses Tatty of murdering her husband. Facing public scorn and legal peril, Tatty gathers an unlikely band of allies in a battle to clear her name. Black Silk and Sympathy is a riveting and realistic journey through the front parlours and dark alleys of 1860s Sydney, from the Botanic Gardens in the morning to the cemetery at midnight.  

I'm a ‘taphophile’ - someone who has an interest in graves, cemeteries and funerals. So I thought I’d write a series set during the mid-Victorian era when funerals were still spectacles and something people aspired to, whether they could afford them or not – and then I could enjoy myself researching funeral vehicles, mourning clothes and traditions, the preparation of the body …