A warm welcome to Alison Huntingford, author of "A Ha'penny Will Do" as she takeover the Club on Monday, February 7th! Come join in the fun, ask questions, learn about her and her books, plus enter the giveaways!! To join the group, click HERE and please, answer all the questions!!
Author Bio:
I have a degree in Humanities with Literature and have always enjoyed reading, especially the great writers of the 19th Century, such as Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy. A great deal of my working life has been spent teaching English and maths to young people in the workplace.
I have done many different jobs in my working life, from nursing to shelf filling and everything in-between! Having lived long enough now, I realise that life very rarely goes to plan. My novels are based on the true stories of my ancestors and involve a lot of careful research. I feel the lives of ordinary people can be just as sad, funny, dramatic and interesting as anyone famous. We are all just struggling to survive.
My writing takes place anywhere and everywhere, even whilst sitting in the car. I find driving is a great way to free the mind and inspire the imagination, and I've often had to pull over in order to get stuff down on paper. I always write the first draft by hand, as I think better that way, then redraft and amend it as I type it up.
In my spare time, when I’m not writing, I enjoy spending time with my husband and our pets, listening to folk and world music, going to the cinema and trying to grow vegetables, with limited success!
Book Blurb:
Love, dreams and destitution.
Three members of one family are linked by their struggle to survive poverty and war at the turn of the century.
Kate, a homesick, lonely Irish immigrant, dreams of being a writer. After difficult times in Liverpool, she comes to London looking for a better life. Hoping to escape from a life of domestic service into marriage and motherhood, she meets charming rogue, William Duffield. Despite her worries about his uncertain temperament, she becomes involved with him. Will it be an escape or a prison?
Fred is a restless elder son, devoted to his mother yet locked in a tempestuous relationship with his father. War intervenes and he secretly signs up to serve abroad. Is his bad reputation deserved? What will become of him?
Joe, too young to sign up for WW1, is left to endure the hardships of war on the home front and deal with his own guilt at not being able to serve. He starts an innocent friendship with his sister-in-law which sustains him through hard times. Will he survive the bombs, the riots, the rationing and find true love in the end?
These are their intertwined and interlocking stories told through the medium of diaries, letters and personal recollections, based on the author’s family history covering the period of 1879–1920. The truth is never plain and rarely simple.