Thank you
to the lovely Rachel for the opportunity to feature on her Saga Saturday
Blog.
Let me
introduce myself, I am Sylvia Broady and I write historical sagas set in the
1930s to 1950s. The location is the diverse city of my birth, Kingston upon
Hull with the River Hull running through its heart, and the beautiful county of
East Yorkshire. Steeped in history and with a wealth of interesting characters.
This is where I draw the strength of my stories from. During WW2, the enemy targeted
Hull relentlessly. I treasure stories told to me of people’s memories of those
darkest days and their survival.
In A TIME
FOR PEACE, I use an incident witnessed by my late husband when a young boy.
March 1945, and Rose, the main character, goes to meet her parents who were leaving
the cinema, when an enemy aircraft dropped a bomb and guns down 34 people,
killing 12. Then in May, following the victory of the war, with peace comes unforeseen
problems. Men come home demobbed, expecting
to be master. But women coped, keeping their children feed and safe without the
help of men. How will they survive peace?
DAUGHTER OF
THE SEA, based around the Humber Estuary, which is the gateway to the North Sea
and the oceans beyond, is paramount to this story. I am interested in the wives
of trawlermen. In my research, a lot is
written about the men, but little of the women in this tight-knit community.
Digging deep and talking to a local historian, I discovered hidden stories of women
and the tragedies and the heartbreaks they faced. With the death of their
husbands at sea, penniless, they are in danger of losing their children to the authorities. Do
they have the strength to deal with such adversity?
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