Another one of Anne Bennett's classics, I couldn't wait to pick up this book after reading all the amazing reviews. The book was engaging as I cried and laughed on numerous occasions and after each page I couldn't wait to read the next. Having said this I feel towards the end the story was dragge...
Lizzie is finding that life in the Birmingham blitz is hard. Her husband is away fighting in the Second World War and she has regretfully sent her two young children away to her parents in Galway, knowing that they will be safe there. She's grateful for her job in munitions but not so happy when ...
A family is divided when its favourite daughter is forced to flee rural Ireland and to seek her living in war-torn Birmingham. Bridie McCarthy loves her family’s farm in the remotest part of Donegal, even though she’s forced to work hard when all of her siblings leave home. She can’t bear to le...
Maria Foley's dream of studying at the prestigious Grafton Academy in Dublin falls apart when her father is paralysed in an accident and it is left to her to look after him. When her true love marries another, she doesn't blame him, for who'd take her on now?
She tried to be pleased for him and said all the right words and yet she was fooling no one. Peggy knew a little of what she was going through because she confessed to Sarah that she had felt the same when Sam was declared fit to go back. The younger children were openly upset for they had got us...
A fortnight after he had come to Birmingham to live it had got no easier. The loss of his mother was like a constant ache inside. Everyone was very kind to him, tiptoeing around him as gently as if they were circling an unexploded bomb. Even his father was like that with him and sometimes it made...
When she did drop off for snatched moments, her mind was filled with images of the children. She was glad when it was time to rise and pull on her uniform. The day was a cold one with a definite autumnal nip in the air, and both she and Joy were glad of their thick green jumpers, yet despite them...
For a change she had gone into the Bull Ring in the city centre and she was unaware of anything untoward happening at Kynoch’s factory. When she arrived home, she found Lily and Aggie already there. They’d had to come home in their overalls, as the cloakroom, with their coats and bags in it, was ...
Carmel remembered the old and rather dour, heavily bearded man whose pictures had been splashed all over the papers the previous May at his anniversary. Apparently, though, his son who would become Edward VIII was nothing like his father. ‘Now that is what I call handsome,’ Aileen said, one day i...
Kate felt immeasurably sorry for her, being separated from Phil for so long, and she had seen the longing in her eyes when she told her about the few days that she and David had spent together. ‘You are so lucky,’ Sally said. ‘Sometimes it’s hard to conjure up Phil’s face at all. Course,’ she wen...
Many times she and Lisette had talked of falling in love, like all young girls longed to do, and how they would know when it happened. That was the topic of conversation one late November day in 1933. ‘I mean, it must be a very odd thing,’ Lisette said, lying full stretch on her bed. ‘It’s what m...