This is the blog of Samie Sands, author of Lockdown. There will be many great books and projects reviewed here. For more, check out thelockdown.co.uk.

Thursday 26 January 2017

When My Ship Comes In by Sue Wilsher

An emotional, compelling family drama from a fantastic new author

Keep the family together, that's what her old mum always said. Put up and shut up. And that's what everyone else did around there.
Essex, 1959. Flo earns her money as a scrubber, cleaning the cruise ships and dreaming of a day when she might sail away from her life in the Dwellings, the squalid tenements of Tilbury docks. Then the Blundell family are evicted from their home.
Fred, Flo's husband, finds work at Monday's, a utopian factory town. Suddenly, it seems like everything is on the up for Flo Blundell and her children. Even Jeanie, Flo's sulking teenage daughter, seems to be thawing a little in her shiny new surroundings.
But when Flo's abusive husband Fred starts drinking again, he jeopardises the family's chance to escape poverty for good.
Flo is faced with a terrible decision. Must she fight to keep her family together? Or could she strive for the life of her dreams - the kind of life she could have when her ship comes in?
Review: Wow, this is a really uplifting novel about a woman beating all the odds, getting by despite everything being stacked against them, it left me reeling at the end. In a world, during the 50's, where men were deemed as the more important sex, it's amazing to see this book written from the perspective of two strong women. I love how different this novel is from the typical historical romance too, it's really worth a read and I look forward to more from this author.

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