A Daughter's Choice: A True Story of Hardship, Heartache and Hope
By (Author) Margaret Ford
Pan Macmillan
Pan Books
25th June 2019
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
Autobiography: historical, political and military
Social and cultural history
Local and family history, nostalgia
942.7623082092
Paperback
384
Width 127mm, Height 203mm, Spine 22mm
417g
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, A Daughter's Choice brilliantly evokes a lost world, seen through the eyes of a courageous and spirited young woman who never gave up on her dreams.
Margaret Ford was born in Blackburn in 1926 and grew up there between the wars. She moved away after marrying in 1947 and today lives in Cumbria. A Daughter's Choice is her first book.