Dora’s Dream

Annie Murray

A YOUNG maid who finds herself alone in the tough and teeming streets of mid-19^th century Birmingham must fight against the odds to survive in a gritty and emotion-packed tale of hardship and struggle from Annie Murray, one of the UK’s best-loved saga writers.

The city of Birmingham may not now be Murray’s (pictured below) home territory but its people, its streets and its fascinating past have become an integral part of both her life and her writing. 

And 31 years after she captured readers’ hearts with Birmingham Rose, her first novel based in the city, she’s back with Dora's Dream, the second book in the Children of Birmingham series which began with The Pearl Button Girl and follows the trials and triumphs of the Fletcher family.

In 1851, the Fletchers were struck by tragedy and the four youngest siblings, Elsie, Dora, John and Mabs, were taken to a workhouse orphanage whilst the family’s eldest child, Ada, was taken in by their neighbour. Seven years later, Dora is a spirited young maid with a vivid imagination and finds solace in the library of the esteemed Birmingham family she works for. But when a forbidden love leads to a secret that could ruin her, Dora has no choice but to leave the only place that has ever offered her security and kindness.

Alone and with only her own instincts and initiative to rely on, Dora reinvents herself as a washerwoman, with each stitch and scrubbing of clothes acting as a testament to her fierce determination to protect her daughter, Rose.

But, snatching any free moment in her exhausting days, Dora begins to write her own stories, dreaming that one day she will see her words in print. As fate reunites Dora with members of her long-lost family, she must face fresh challenges and personal heartache. Can this plucky young woman, armed with grit, love and a pen, defy her past and finally write her own destiny?

Murray, whose home was in Birmingham when she began her own writing career, invests hours of local research and her powerful gift of imagination and empathetic insight into her drama-packed, family-based stories, and her genuine affection for the city and its people always shines through in her compelling and authentic sagas.

And this hard-hitting and yet warm-hearted series packs in all those ingredients – close family bonds, romance, drama, human emotions and the struggles and uncertainties of life amidst the hardships of an industrial city – which make her stories such a genuine reading treat for all saga fans.
(Macmillan, hardback, £22)