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Grace Hall (United Kingdom) (2011/05/04):
1950 – seven–year-old Carol Martin lies encased in an iron lung, struck down by the killer disease, polio. Distraught at her side, her mother Violet wonders if this is her punishment – for Carol is the love-child who should never have been born…Spanning more than half of the last century, Family of Women is the haunting story of three generations of women in one family and the joys and struggles in their lives. Bessie – scarred by a childhood of poverty in the slums of Victorian Birmingham and left a young widow with four children, is a hard, bullying woman who will go to disturbing lengths to keep her children under her thumb. Violet – one of Bessie’s four children, marries young to escape, into the arms of a man whose life will be broken by war. Linda – grows up on a large housing estate in the 1950s, with older sister Joyce, and her beloved younger sister, Carol. Intelligent and energetic, she craves education and for something more than the life she sees around her. Torn from her longed for place at the grammar school, she gives up hoping for anything better. It takes a tragic love affair to make her question the limitations of her life and the secrets which haunt her family. (Description from back cover)
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