Sylvia Broady

A beautiful historical novel that's realistically heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time. The first part of the book focuses on women in the UK during WWII and the rest of the novel is an excellent portrayal of life of single mothers and their babies during the 1940s. The beginning is a slower pace, but the story quickly picks up when Evie, the MC, realizes she is pregnant. A lighthearted ode to enduring and struggling unwed mothers and the happily ever after that all deserve. Thoughtful historical women's fiction.

Net Galley Feedback… (mehr)

I was really intrigued by the blurb for this book, of the woman running through the streets, injured in a road accident and then searching for her daughter. However, that is the tip of the iceberg where this book is concerned.

Alice Goddard is the woman desperately looking for help when she is knocked over and left badly injured and with memory loss. When her memory does return she remembers her daughter, Daisy, and yet has no idea what happened to her. Try as she might, she cannot get answers from anyone. Having no choice but to get on with her life, she enters rehabilitation and gets herself well again, going on to find a rewarding job. Her lost daughter is never far from her thoughts though.

This is such a wonderful story! I love a good saga and a good saga is what this is. It begins in 1930 when the First World War is still very much in people's minds and yet it was the war to end all wars so nobody thinks there will be another one. The story continues right through the 1930s and covers the whole of the Second World War. Much of the book covers Alice's training and eventual qualification as a nurse and she is very much involved with nursing wounded men during the war.

I really felt for Alice. What an awful thing to have no idea what happened to her daughter. It completely haunted her. Some good things happen to her too though, including her love for a truly lovely man, good friendships and family around her.

The author's fondness for her home city of Hull shines through and she highlights the devastation which it suffered during the war. I enjoyed it very much as a setting.

I was completely drawn into Alice's story. I so wanted her to be reunited with Daisy and to have a happy outcome, especially after so much sadness and hardship. I found her war years fascinating too as she undertook some dangerous missions. It's just such a warm and gorgeous read and I was gripped all the way through. This is a must-read for saga fans. I certainly loved it.… (mehr)

Too young to have been conscripted during WW2, Hull-born Rose Ellerby finds the new peace holds as many problems, and even with the cessation of the bombing some of those problems aren’t much different from those during the years of black-outs and air-raids. Rationing doesn’t ease; it gets worse. Housing, even a rented room, is so scarce a commodity that bribery is commonplace. Brothers and husbands are demobbed to find their work places a pile of rubble or their jobs taken by others. Irritation mounts on all sides, sometimes fuelled by symptoms modern readers would now associate with post-traumatic stress.

When Rose is offered a job with the WVS she comes into her own, becoming a calming influence and a never-ending source of support and recreation for families in her area of the city. But she can’t conjure up a dwelling for herself and widowed Joe to enable them to get married and set up home with his young son, and she can’t totally disown an ex-boyfriend on the skids and turning to crime. When her brother returns with a pregnant German wife, she finds she’s not the only one with secrets.

Kingston upon Hull was the unnamed “north east coastal town” often quoted in news bulletins during the WW2, having 92% of its housing stock either destroyed or damaged and over half its population made homeless. Sylvia Broady makes a good story of different people living in the aftermath and working towards a hoped-for better future.
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