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Secrets of the Singer Girls is Kate Thompson's heart-warming and moving novel about the brave, hardworking women who kept the home fires burning in the East End of London during World War Two.
1942. Sixteen-year-old Poppy Percival turns up at the gates of Trout's clothing factory in Bethnal Green with no idea what her new life might have in store. There to start work as a seamstress and struggling to get to grips with the noise, dirt and devastation of East London, Poppy can't help but miss the quiet countryside of home. But Poppy harbours a dark secret - one that wrenched her away from all she knew and from which she is still suffering . . .
And Poppy's not the only one with a secret. Each of her new friends at the factory is hiding something painful. Vera Shadwell, the forelady, has had a hard life with scars both visible and concealed; her sister Daisy has romantic notions that could get her in trouble; and Sal Fowler, a hardworking mother who worries about her two evacuated boys for good reason. Bound by ties of friendship, loyalty and family, the devastating events of the war will throw each of their lives into turmoil but also bring these women closer to each other than they could ever have imagined.
Kate Thompson (Author): The Chilling Moment I Discovered I Was a Victim of a Wartime Tragedy!
Staring down the stairway that leads into London's Bethnal Green Tube Station, I found myself about to be taken on a journey back in time. On a spring day with streams of commuters descending the stairs, nothing could look more ordinary, but seventy-two years ago, tragedy unfolded on those steps. Little is known of the biggest civilian disaster of the Second World War, but in less than 30 seconds, 173 people, were crushed to death on the stairway that led down to what was then an underground shelter.
Not a single German bomb was dropped, but in the time it took for the air raid siren to sound, the narrow corridor was converted into a charnel house as a horrifying crush of people piled helplessly one on top of another. After the searchlights went on, an anti-aircraft battery in nearby Victoria Park launched a salvo of new rockets and, fearing a bomb, the crowd surged forward. A mother carrying a baby tripped on the stairs and, like a pack of cards, the shelters fell, one by one. The scenes were unimaginable on that bleak March night in 1943.
My reason for wanting to visit the sight where so many people died wasn't born out of morbid curiosity, however. I was there to research it as I had already decided to feature the Tube disaster in the novel I was writing. Set in the East End of London, Secrets of the Singer Girls attempts to unravel the mysteries that bind four machinists who work sewing Navy and Army uniforms for the troops. The research I had already conducted revealed a world of poverty, grim survival, immense bravery and human tragedy in wartime Bethnal Green. But it was discovering that I shared a name with a victim who died in the disaster, which leant a deep poignancy to my research. Just who was the other Kate Thompson, and what led her to flee to the so-called sanctuary of the underground that fateful day?
About the Author
More Details
- Contributor: Kate Thompson
- Imprint: Pan Books
- ISBN13: 9781447280866
- Number of Pages: 400
- Packaged Dimensions: 130x197x26mm
- Packaged Weight: 274
- Format: Paperback
- Publisher: Pan Macmillan
- Release Date: 2015-03-26
- Series: Aziza's Secret Fairy Door
- Binding: Paperback / softback
- Biography: Kate Thompson is a journalist with over fifteen years' experience as a writer for the broadsheets and women's weekly magazines. She is now freelance and, as well as writing for newspapers, she's a seasoned ghostwriter.Secrets of the Singer Girls is her first novel.
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