Born in 1926, the year of the General Strike, Margaret Ford grew up with her brother Bobby in the mill town of Blackburn where her father worked in his parents' pub. She was too young to understand her mother's unhappiness or that her father was gambling away any money he earned. Then, when she was ten, her father abandoned his family, leaving her mother struggling to survive. Margaret took the hard decision to leave school at thirteen and get a job in the dye works to help pay the rent. Later that year war broke out. Coming of age in the Second World War, Margaret learned to live for the moment. As the boys she grew up with were killed in action, and Blackburn was bombed, she snatched happiness where she could find it. By the time she was seventeen, she was a regular at the local dance halls where there were plenty of young men eager to court her. Her heart was torn between a dashing RAF bomber pilot and her childhood sweetheart, Raymond, who was many thousands of miles away serving on a submarine in the Far East. Would she see either man again? Poignant and compelling, this book brilliantly evokes a lost world, seen through the eyes of a courageous and spirited young woman who never gave up on her dreams.
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