The Ratcatcher's Daughter

Product Description

The year is 1900 and thirteen-year-old Issy McKelvie is forced to leave school to start her first job as a maid in an undertaking establishment. Issy's entire family is now working and because her father's job on the wharves is unreliable, he also works with his dogs as a ratcatcher.
In 1900 the plague - The Black Death - also arrives in Australia, spread by fleas on rats. As the disease starts to take its human toll panic grows. The rats must be exterminated.
Issy loathes both rats and her father's pack of yappy, snappy, rat-killing terriers. But when her father becomes ill, Issy must join the battle to rid the city of the plague-carrying rats. However, many things about the city's control of the plague are not as they seem. As she discovers and pieces together various clues, Issy comes to realise that the real world is very different from the one she thought she knew.