Lost Jewels

Present day: When Boston historian Kate Kirby receives a tempting offer to write an article about the “Cheapside Hoard,” discovered during construction work in London at the start of the 20th century, she suspects it’s the chance of a lifetime. No one knows how or why the jewellery and priceless valuables ended up buried beneath the ground.

However, the trip to London also forces Kate to delve into her own family’s past. Upon returning to her native Boston, she finds sketches in the notes and sketchbooks of her great-grandmother—who came from a poor family of Irish immigrants—of a gold, jewel-encrusted button that looks suspiciously similar to the buttons from the hoard. Could Kate use these clues to learn something about the life of her great-grandmother, Essie Murphy, who once left London in a hurry and never returned?

Summer 1912: Essie visits her brother at the construction site where he works as a digger for a miserable wage, just as the workers’ pickaxes break through the floor of an old house. The astonished men discover a magnificent treasure—from Ottoman pendants and jewels from Elizabethan England to antique jewellery, pearls, and precious gems… Is it possible that these jewels—and one in particular—helped Essie and her sisters change their fate?

Kate, along with photographer Marcus Holt, begins her investigation. She is particularly interested in the story of a small champlevé-enamelled ring with a diamond and the gold, jewel-encrusted buttons. What truth do these valuables hide, and what will Kate learn about her family? It seems that Kate’s ideas about her own origins, and herself, will soon be in jeopardy.