Changes

|title=The Apothecary's Daughter

|author=Charlotte Betts

|reviewer=Sue Fairhead

|borrow=Yes

|isbn=9780749954499

|pages=386

|publisher=Piatkus

|date=February 2012

|website=http://www.charlottebetts.com/

|summary=An exciting and realistic debut novel set in the era of the bubonic plague in London. An apothecary's daughter learns about life and love, and the reader gains a great deal of knowledge, quite painlessly, about the privations of the 17th century.

}}

Susannah is an intelligent young woman in her twenties who assists her father in his pharmacy. But the date is 1665 so he's actually called an apothecary, creating herbal remedies from scratch; moreoever this is an era when women did not, generally, do work of this kind. However, London is in the grip of the bubonic plague. So apothecaries must work overtime to produce nosegays - supposedly to ward off evil humours - as well as plague preventative medicine, herbs for poultices, and so on.

[[To Defy A King by Elizabeth Chadwick]]<br>