Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Rag Maiden | 2024 | Libby Ashworth | Buy |
| 2 | The Market Girl | 2024 | Libby Ashworth | Buy |
| 3 | The Widow’s Shillings | 2025 | Libby Ashworth | Buy |
The Cavanah Family is a three-book historical saga by Libby Ashworth, set during and after the Irish potato famine of the late 1840s. The series opens with The Rag Maiden (2024), in which Kitty Cavanah and her husband Peter secure passage to America to escape starvation in Ireland. When Peter vanishes during the crossing of the Irish Sea, taking their tickets with him, Kitty and her young children are left stranded in Liverpool without money or prospects. They eventually make their way to Blackburn, Lancashire, where Kitty scrapes together a living collecting rags.
The Market Girl and The Widow’s Shillings continue the family’s story as they put down roots in northern England. Ashworth writes from deep personal knowledge of Lancashire, where she was born and raised. She can trace her own ancestors back to the region’s medieval villages, and many of them worked in the cotton industry. That connection to local history gives these books their grounded, specific sense of place and working-class life in Victorian England.