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ADVANCE INFORMATION
What Kathleen
Did
Jill McRae-Spencer
KEY SELLING POINTS
An alternative to the normal ‘romance’ genre which traditional ends with the heroine marrying.
Tackles the issues of the choices facing women about their future between the First and Second world War.
An independent female main character willing to defy the conventions of the day.
It is 1929 and 18-year-old Kathleen, from a prosperous middle-class London home, travels with her friend Alice
to Devon for a holiday. While there she meets Jim Wilcox, a tenant farmer, and Robert Neville, heir to Alston
Manor, the landlord. While Jim views a wife as subject to a husband’s will, as his property, Robert sees a
husband’s role as protector.
Declaring she wants to ‘do’ something and not marry the first young man who comes along, Kathleen
represents the modern woman. A most significant issue post war concerned the place of women in society.
The press ran headlines such as ‘Our Surplus Women’ and the 1921 census confirmed that women
outnumbered men by almost two million. The independent woman was for many men an alarming prospect.
Marriage was considered the norm and to be left on the shelf a humiliation.
Seduced by Jim, Kathleen finds she is pregnant. She now must face difficult choices. Will she buckle down
and do what Jim demands of a wife or is there still in her a determination to fight on whatever the adversity?
And there is another war on the horizon…
Jill McRae-Spencer was born and first grew up in war-time Plymouth before moving to a remote part of
Dartmoor. She trained and worked as a solicitor in London before returning to Devon and becoming a teacher.
She gained a Ph.D. in 1991 and an M.A in creative writing in 2013.
Publication Date: 28th September 2024 £11.99 ISBN: 9781805145356
Thema subject category: FV – Historical fiction
paperback 198 x 129 mm 384 pp Portrait Author location: Devon
Sales: Star Book Sales LLP
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E: enquiries@starbooksales.com
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