Beggars and Choosers (ebook)

Argumento de Beggars and Choosers (ebook)

?Meticulously-researched?warming the hearts of millions of readers.? Historical Novels Review

?Collier has a gift for bringing her characters to life that will keep the reader engrossed until the end? Daily Mail

Beggars and Choosers ? Book One in the Brothers and Lovers Series

Pontypridd, Rhondda 1905: Coal is king and the families who sunk the first collieries are rich.

No-one is wealthier or more generous than Harry Watkin Jones. His daughter Sali is about to marry her childhood sweetheart, but tragedy strikes.

Four years later Sali is a penniless outcast, fleeing from a violent husband and struggling to support herself and her son in a world very different. Sali finds work in the home of family of colliers and she and her son find the warmth and love missing from their lives for so long.

But unrest and violence have come to the valleys. Caught up in the conflict, Sali finds herself denying her roots, her class, and even sacrificing her son's future, for the sake of the people she loves and the cause they are prepared to die for...

Edyth stared blindly through the window, as they passed through the gates set in the high walls that surrounded the workhouse, infirmary and fever hospital complex. They reached the bottom of High Street and drove under the railway bridge into Tumble Square. She rapped her cane on the roof in Taff Street and shouted, 'Drive home via Mill Street, CatherineStreet, Gelliwastad Road and Bridge Street, and drive slowly in Mill Street.'

'Yes, Mrs James,' came the coachman's muffled reply.

Edyth removed a lavender-scented handkerchief from her handbag and held it over her nose and mouth

as she studied the dilapidated terrace that backed on to the river. The heat of August had abated, the evenings were growing shorter, and people were taking their winter coats out of mothballs to prepare for the winter, but the stench of sewage, rot and decay was still overwhelming. She saw the sign over Owen Bull's shop and imagined Sali and her child living within those mouldering walls, breathing III the foul air day after day.

'No more!' she promised herself fervently. No matter what the police said, or what 'rights' Owen Bull claimed as Sali's husband, there was no way that she was going to allow her niece, or Mansel's son to return to that slum to live in those foul conditions with a man she regarded as a murderer, even if the police didn't.

Not while she still drew breath.0