The beautiful and authentic depiction of Sydney in the early 1920s by Pamela Hart provides a compelling backdrop for her riveting story of the post-World War I era. ‘The War Bride’ accurately portrays the changing face of society as the reader quickly becomes engrossed in the precarious life of Margaret Dalton, a young English war bride who immigrates after a two year wait to join her Australian husband.
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Due to a Romeo and Juliette style quirk of fate, she arrives only to discover that apparently her husband was already married to someone else when he married her. Margaret courageously decides to remain in Sydney and try to make a new life for herself on her own. Sergeant McBride, soon to be de-mobbed from the army, comes to her aid by organising emergency accommodation and a few essentials.
The changing attitudes that emerged after the end of World War I are neatly encapsulated in an exchange between Margaret and her landlady: ‘In my day if a girl got a respectable tradesman for a husband she counted herself lucky. Or a government job. You girls today don’t know what’s what’. ‘Maybe we know too much,’ Margaret said quietly… maybe we’ve seen too much death to be satisfied with being half alive.’
Including a burgeoning romance and many insightful pearls of wisdom like the one quoted above, Pamela Hart has drawn on true stories of the fate that sometimes awaited young and unsuspecting war brides for her new novel. Meticulously researched and beautifully written in a way that not only captures historic authenticity, this book will also capture your heart, mind and imagination.
The War Bride
Pamela Hart
Hachette
