Desperate to preserve her sister Jane’s reputation, Cassandra Austen lost her own

Poor Cassy. The Miss Austen of this novel’s title is Cassandra, Jane’s elder sister. She was to have married Thomas Fowle, but he died of yellow fever in 1797 on an expedition to the West Indies. Before he left, she vowed to remain faithful to him and, if he didn’t return, never to marry anyone else. It would be her undoing. In later life when she herself falls ill, Tom’s sister Isabella remarks: ‘It will take more than a fever to undo you, Cassandra.’ Yet, by Tom’s death, she was already undone.

The narrative moves back and forth between the 1790s and the 1840s. Towards the end of her life Cassandra is on a mission to find and destroy potentially disparaging letters written by Jane and by herself to Eliza, Isabella’s mother. By 1840 she is a demanding, decrepit old spinster, intent on safeguarding for posterity Jane’s, and her family’s, reputation.