The Coffee Pot Book Club presents: A Ha’penny Will Do by Alison Huntingford,

Book Title:  A Ha’penny Will Do

Author: Alison Huntingford

Publication Date: 31st January 2022

Publisher: Austin Macauley

Page Length: 368 Pages

Genre: Historical Fiction

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A Ha’penny Will Do

By Alison Huntingford

Love, dreams and destitution.

Three members of one family are linked by their struggle to survive poverty and war at the turn of the century.  

Kate, a homesick, lonely Irish immigrant, dreams of being a writer.  After difficult times in Liverpool she comes to London looking for a better life.  Hoping to escape from a life of domestic service into marriage and motherhood, she meets charming rogue William Duffield.  Despite her worries about his uncertain temperament, she becomes involved with him. Will it be an escape or a prison? 

Fred is a restless elder son, devoted to his mother yet locked in a tempestuous relationship with his father.  War intervenes and he secretly signs up to serve abroad.  Is his bad reputation deserved?  What will become of him?

Joe, too young to sign up for WW1, is left to endure the hardships of war on the home front and deal with his own guilt at not being able to serve.  He starts an innocent friendship with his sister-in-law which sustains him through hard times.  Will he survive the bombs, the riots, the rationing and find true love in the end?

These are their intertwined and interlocking stories recreated through the medium of diaries, letters and personal recollections, based on the author’s family history covering the period of 1879 – 1920. The truth is never plain and rarely simple. 

This novel is a fresh and compelling look at life for the working-class poor in England at the end of the Victorian era.  Covering issues such as the struggle for home rule in Ireland, the hardships of domestic service, marital strife, the suffragettes and the horrors of World War 1 on the home front and abroad, this is a realistic and gripping tale which keeps the reader involved in their human plight all the way.

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Alison Huntingford has a degree in humanities with literature, and has always enjoyed reading, especially, the great writers of the 19th century. 

She is an only child of two only children and so has always felt a distinct lack of family. This has inspired her to research her family history and most of her writing is based on this. Her debut novel, The Glass Bulldog, was published in 2019, and was nominated for the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction. This is her second full length novel, although, she has also written several short stories. 

In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her husband and their pets, listening to music, going to the cinema, and gardening.  She lives in Devon, on the edge of Dartmoor.

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