Have you visited Priorton? It is near Darlington in the northeast of England , on the River Wear, a small town in the centre of a mining and industrial area. People, good and bad, come to live here from Wales , Ireland , the West Midlands and beyond and bring with them their troubles and their skills. There are strong characters and weak, young and old but you won't find Priorton on any map, only on the one at the front of Wendy Robertson's novels.
- ISBN 0 7472 5183
In the first book in THE KITTY RAINBOW TRILOGY Ishmael Slaughter, a bare-knuckle fighter in the mid-nineteenth century, sees a baby fall from a viaduct and rescues her from the River Wear. He has no idea who her parents are and he names her Kitty Rainbow. His landlady has just killed the kittens he was caring for so he knows he cannot take the baby home with him.
Instead he persuades a Scottish draper with a tendency to hit the bottle to look after her along with her 'strange' young son. Kitty grows up wild, fiercely loving to her friends, Ishmael most of all, but tough with her enemies. She works hard, finds love and becomes pregnant, travels from Priorton to London and learns the story of her parentage before returning north to her loved ones.
THE CHILDREN OF THE STORM - ISBN 0 7472 5184 3
opens in 1914 when Mara, Kitty Rainbow's second daughter, is teaching in Hartlepool.
The school is demolished by bombardment from a German warship and she returns home to Priorton, taking with her a package from a dying Frenchman for his children. Pansy, her landlady, moans that she cannot live alone and Mara takes her to Priorton too, where she soon finds out that Pansy isn't so helpless after all. Mara finds the Frenchman's children, who turn out to be much older than she expected. Jean-Paul is working and trying to look after his deranged sister, Helene, and Mara takes it upon herself to help. Meanwhile Kitty's elder daughter who has been nursing in Russia returns home exhausted.
Opens in 1939 in Alexandria where Thomas and Kay Scorton, Kitty's grandchildren, live with their parents, Leonora and Sam Scorton. After the end of the war Kay, Thomas and Leonora return to England . Kay, a young widow with a child, hates the cold and dreariness of post-war Britain , but they have come to celebrate Kitty Rainbow's eighty-fifth birthday and gradually Kitty rouses Kay's interest in her various businesses and the history of her family. Meantime Laurenz and Patrizia Gold, Jewish refugees who have escaped from Nazi occupied Europe, are trying to start a new life in a resettlement camp not far from Kitty's house. Laurenz is ruthless and determined, Patrizia cowed and afraid. Their lives become linked with those of Thomas and Kay with dramatic consequences.
Wendy has a wonderful way of interweaving all her disparate characters, bringing them together to make an intriguing story. |
