But she is the breadwinner of the family, since her stonemason father suffered a disabling stroke and her mother must nurse him day and night. Hannah, at least, still has her parents and a pair of much younger sisters. Unless he can save enough money to buy passage back to Italy, Giuseppe has little hope to escape from this harsh life. With his battered old fiddle, Giuseppe busks for coins on the street with little to hope for except a bowl of gruel and a bed in a dormitory full of boys as bad off as himself. Giuseppe, meanwhile, longs to go back to his native Italy, from which he was taken against his will when an uncle sold him to the cruel padrone whom he now serves as a slave.

He worries that if he doesn’t figure out how to make the automaton’s head, he will never pass the guild examination to be a journeyman clockmaker. Still, Frederick hasn’t learned to accept and trust his master’s love, and so he labors in secret to build a clockwork man. Treeless’s workhouse, thanks to his mechanical talents and the kindness of a clockmaker, who made him his apprentice. All of these destinies are caught up together, intertwined, and depend on the qualities of courage, resourcefulness, and friendship in each of them, qualities that bring them together in spite of their differences. Together and separately, the face a series of challenges that may determine their future happiness, their family’s welfare, their personal survival, and/or the fate of a nature sanctuary adjacent to the city. city, sometime in the 1800s, three children who have never previously met each other have a strange adventure together.

The Clockwork Three by Matthew J. Kirby