Emma Hornby
AFTER three years of abusive treatment from her brutal
father, a young woman uses the outbreak of war in 1939 as her chance to grab
freedom in a moving and gripping saga from Bolton author Emma Hornby.
Hornby (pictured below), who once worked in a Blackpool rock factory and was
inspired to write after researching her own family history, bases her stories
on the many generations of her family who eked out life amidst the squalor and
poverty of Lancashire’s slums.
And this history is reflected in her emotionally-charged stories which include the powerful and absorbing novel, A Shilling for a Wife, set in mid-19thcentury Bolton, and Her Wartime Secret, featuring a family torn apart by war and held together by a secret. In this new saga, Hornby sweeps us off to Bolton again where 17-year-old Renee Rushmore lives at home with her father Ivan... a cruel man who rules the house with an iron fist and keeps Renee isolated and alone. She is desperate to escape him, but with no friends to help her, what hope does she have?
But her father’s eyes are on her day and night. With the
help of Jimmy, and the strength found in her new circle of loyal friends, will
Renee be able to escape Ivan’s cruelty and find happiness at last?
Hornby is on fine storytelling form in this powerful and
hard-hitting story which is not afraid to explore some of the hidden, haunting
and disturbing corners of family life as Renee tries desperately to escape the
clutches of her evil father.
It’s a tale that brims with emotion, romance and the harsh
realities of life in a working class Lancashire town during wartime as readers
follow Renee on a turbulent journey through suffering and hardship, but also
the joys of new-found friendships and the comfort and warmth of a loving
relationship. Authentic, compelling, featuring characters to both love and
hate, and with some unexpected twists and turns, A Daughter’s War is another
winner for a northern author who has her home county written right across her
heart.
(Penguin, paperback, £7.99)
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