Here we are, in the sixties, and this evocative novel summons up the small Lancashire mill town of Horwich, (the author’s long ago home town) and has three young women carrying the complicated but enthralling and cogently plotted story, which is an exploration of the strength needed to find a way though difficulties.
Joyce Roberts is working hard in the local mill and loves Dave Yates. Is it to be happily ever after? I do hope so, as they discover Dave has a life-changing illness.
Then there’s Sally Roberts, married to Joyce’s brother who is in the RAF. Living so close to an air base means that Sally cannot avoid the reality of the Cold War threat. What’s more, she has left her two younger sisters back at the family home where she hopes life is running along untrammeled. But is it? Of course not. Can they cope without big sister?
Meanwhile Kathy Armstrong, who is engaged to Nick, the eldest of the Roberts brothers, is frustrated at work at the local newspaper where she feels she takes second place to the men.
As if all this isn’t enough, our author, Anne L Harvey quite rightly brings in antagonist, bad bad Jud Simcox who is about to leave prison …
Roll of drums.
Yes, it sounds a frenetic plot, and it is complicated – for the author – but not the reader. It works …
I enjoyed it, I found the period refreshing, because the 2nd World War is being done to death, even by me. This period, the sixties was ground breaking, tense, frightening, and is ignored. What’s not to like as a setting: the world on a knife edge with the Cold War (which quite frequently veered perilously close to a hot war). Female equality (which had come just so far) was still not quite there as women joined the workforce in great numbers and the fair pay, fair opportunities struggles developed.
Grist to the mill for an author, and new fields to discover, or be reminded of, for the reader.
Read it: interesting, fluent, cogently plotted. One to buy for the Christmas stocking. Quick quick, still time.
Such a Time as This by Anne L Harvey available here
Bernie Stevens is to be congratulated on the evocative cover design.
Annie Clarke: Heroes on the Home Front series.