Susan, a Jane Austen Prequel

Sixteen-year-old Susan Smithson – pretty but poor, clever but capricious – has just been expelled from a school for young ladies in London. At the mansion of the formidable Lady Catherine de Bourgh, she attracts a raffish young nobleman. Her scandalised guardian dispatches her to her uncle Collins’ rectory in Kent, where her sensible cousin Alicia lives and “where nothing ever happens.” Here Susan mischievously inspires the local squire to put on a play. What with the unexpected arrival of Frank Churchill, Alicia’s falling in love and a tumultuous elopement, rural Kent will never seem quite so placid, ever again.