Before she became the immortal, terrifying, wedding dress-wearing Miss Havisham of GREAT EXPECTATIONS, she was a young woman named Catherine, with all her dreams ahead of her.

Catherine Havisham was born into privilege. Spry, imperious, she is the daughter of a wealthy brewer, and lives in luxury in Satis House. But she is never far from the smell of hops and the arresting letters on the brewhouse wall --- havisham. A reminder of all she owes to the family name, and the family business.

Sent by her father to stay with the Chadwycks, Catherine discovers literature, music and masquerades --- elegant pastimes to remove the taint of her family's new money. But for all her growing sophistication Catherine is anything but worldly, and when a charismatic stranger pays her attention, everything --- her heart, her future, the very Havisham name --- is vulnerable.

In this astounding prelude to Charles Dickens’s classic GREAT EXPECTATIONS, Ronald Frame unfurls the psychological trauma that made young Catherine into Miss Havisham, and cursed her to a life alone roaming the halls of the mansion in the tatters of the dress she wore for the wedding she was never to have.