Flower for Your Troubles (Electronic book text)

The first novel of a saga, 'Flower for your Troubles' first visits the residents of Yorkshire's Crosswell district at the home-front in the harvest time of 1944. WW2 heaving to its close, normality remains elusive in the town's faithful, and no less affecting conflicts of personal and collective obligations wrench hearts and minds from the bodies of their experience. Rose, a sweet young Land Girl, and Eddie, a bashful Bevin Boy, quietly work a national service above and below the land; beyond, in the relative splendour of a holiday, these two humble figures will meet and recombine to winning effect, duty and beauty complemented in first-love and honourable affection. Yet, why is it that industrialist and cuckolded colliery owner, Mr Charles Butterworth, pays such an uncommon fascination with the newly crowned Summer Queen? And what a peculiar and precious hold Methodist firebrand Miss Moorhouse exerts upon the spiritual capital of our world in miniature? And what secrets do County Officer, Mrs Webber, and Land Girl Forewoman, Bella, hold beneath distraction and the surface smiles of their propriety? Perhaps the truest test- even of a nation's resolve- lies between pride and prowess, faith and class consciousness, where sometimes- even in harsh times- nobility and honour can only manifest through sacrifice or the expense of a lower principle. But through the hollow din and dimming shadows of war's long season who will isolate just what constitutes the higher ground? Seemingly encapsulated in an ancient well's water and indeed in local sage, Ma Higgins, the wealth and wisdom of a former era offers wholesale restoration in mind and body, and most particularly to the fading spirit of a troubled flower whose alighting petals litter the intersecting paths of so many livelihoods. The saga continues in 1955 with Dulcinea Temple's 'Penny for your Thoughts'.