Friday Finds (August 27)

Sold away by her mother, Moth is befriended by a young pickpocket named Torch Boy. He introduces her to the formidable Marm Birnbaum, matron of the leading pickpocketing ring of the Lower East Side. There, under the guidance of a female thief named Kid Glove Lena, Moth is given lessons in survival, loyalty and, surprisingly, the art of melodramatic “blood-and-thunder” theatre.

Moth soon learns that life as one of Marm’s girls is filled with unexpected dangers. After witnessing a violent crime involving a little girl, Moth is taken into the care of Dr. Sadie Fonda, a physician at the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. Moth’s confessions about that night confirm what the young doctor has suspected all along, that there is a dark secret haunting the young women of the city — the myth of the virgin cure.

Determined to expose the myth, Sadie unknowingly puts herself in harm’s way, leaving Moth to travel down a twisted, strange and dangerous path, alone. From a dime museum of anatomical wonders, to a dance hall populated by child prostitutes, to an apothecary shop where a magical pear tree once stood, Moth must rely on the lessons she learns from both Sadie and the streets to make things right.

The Virgin Cure is a tale of secrets and truths, of dark myths and magic of the heart — of one woman’s fight to be heard, and one girl’s desire to be loved.