£5.99 Pan Macmillan

By Margaret Dickinson

A rich, vivid saga of love, loss and redemption, set during the years spanning two world wars

When Florrie Maltby defies her father by refusing to marry Gervase Richards, she sets off a chain of events that will alter her life. Instead she goes to London and becomes involved with the suffragette movement. She’s imprisoned for her militant actions, and goes on hunger strike. With her health deteriorating, there is one person who can save her – Gervase.

After a brief stay in the countryside to recuperate, Florrie returns to London to continue her fight for women’s rights. Only the outbreak of the Great War puts a halt to her activities. It is when James, her younger brother, is shamed by their father into volunteering, that Florrie enlists as a nurse and is sent to the Front. Amidst the fear and horror of the hospital close to the trenches, she finds love. But when her beloved brother is accused of desertion, help comes from a very unexpected source.

There's always something going on as this covers some of the pivotal activities during Edwardian times, a period when women were definitely second class citizens. Dickinson brings out the warmth in this character who knows what she wants, but still gets swept up in events. There is romance, tensions in the family, the shock of France and a broadly painted backcloth of political change. Above all there is Florrie, one of the best female characters to leap out of the page at you this year.


About the Author
Margaret Dickinson was born and brought up in the county of Lincolnshire, where she still lives. At the age of twenty-five, she wrote her first novel. She has subsequently written twenty-one more, all set either in or around her beloved Lincolnshire or its neighbouring counties. Her most recent is Sing As We Go set during the Second World War.