The Hooper Family Saga
3 total works
The first novel in Jessica Stirling's enthralling saga series is set in 1930s England, where an East End girl with ideas of her own makes a surprising journey from the back streets of Shadwell to the salons of Mayfair.
Susan Hooper is private secretary to bestselling author, Vivian Proudfoot. Well-spoken and well-read, she soon learns how to hold her own with London's literary sophisticates. But the attentions of Mercer Hughes, a handsome agent with a notorious reputation and a shady past, are more than a docker's daughter can cope with and she finds herself falling reluctantly in love.
She is soon cut off from her father and at loggerheads with her idealistic brother Ronnie and his gadabout wife Breda. Even her old friend, newspaperman Danny Cahill, is shocked at the circles in which Susan finds herself where pimps and gangsters rub shoulders with wealthy fascist sympathisers in support of the war in Spain.
As the threat of world war grows Susan is torn between loyalty to her family and a lover who will not let her go. But when the time comes to choose she finds a solution that surprises everyone.
Susan's story continues in The Wayward Wife.
Set in wartime London, the second novel in The Hooper Family series continues the story that began with A Corner of the Heart: the saga of an East End clan that knows both the Shadwell docklands and the world of books and broadcasting.
The war everyone dreaded has begun at last, but for Susan Cahill it is more an adventure than a tragedy. Helped by a white lie about her marriage to Danny she has a new job as a producer's assistant at the BBC and glamorous new friends, including one American war reporter who has made London his base and Susan his target.
Danny is also working for the BBC, sharing a room in a freezing farmhouse in Evesham, working long hours monitoring German radio broadcasts - and worrying about Susan.
Stuck in London when the blitz begins, Susan's sister-in-law, Breda Hooper, faces up to the worst with a small son at home and a husband in the fire service. Then her Italian father, hiding out from both the authorities and his former partners in crime, prepares to leave Breda a legacy as explosive as any German bomb.
The Second World War hits home to a scattered East End family in new and unexpected ways in Jessica Stirling's stirring third novel about Britain under siege.
Susan Cahill enjoys her job at the BBC until a bomb destroys the building and brings unwelcome responsibilities and an autocratic new boss, Walter Boscombe. He has no time for ambitious young women from Shadwell and seems determined to break Susan's spirit - and her heart.
Breda Hooper, Susan's widowed sister-in-law, and her small son are rescued from the East End's shattered docklands by Danny, Susan's estranged husband. Settled in a shabby caravan in the Vale of Evesham, Breda soon finds herself entangled in village affairs in more ways than one, with only her quick wits, her new friends and the ever dependable Danny to keep her out of trouble.
For Susan and Breda jeopardy comes not from the skies but in the terrible price each must pay for falling in love with men who are not all that they seem to be and who, even in the midst of all out war, will change their lives forever.