Gritty family saga set in Lancashire in the 1900s and Ireland at the time of the Black and Tans.

Winifred is a determined young woman eager for new experiences, for a life beyond the grocer’s shop counter ruled over by her domineering mother. When her friend Honora - an Irish girl, with the freedom to do as she pleases - drags Winfred along to a Suffragette rally, she realises that there is more to life than the shop and her parents’ humdrum lives of work and grumbling.

Bill Howarth’s troubled childhood echoes through his early life and the scars linger, affecting his work, his relationship and his health. The only light in his life comes from a chance meeting with Winifred, the daughter of a Lancashire grocer. The girl he determines to make his wife.

Meeting Honora’s intelligent and silver-tongued medical student brother turns Winifred’s heart upside down. Abandoned, with an illegitimate child, she is a social outcast. Then Bill Howarth reappears on the scene offering her a way out. Will she take the chance?

Prequel to the Howarth family trilogy Pattern of Shadows “An unforgettable debut novel - perfectly paced,” Menna Elfyn, “... well-paced, gritty love story” Western Mail.

Changing Patterns: “an excellent read... grips its reader from the first few pages.” Historical Novel Society.

Living in the Shadows: “Judith Barrow has surpassed herself in writing this great family saga.” Book Cottage Books.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Judith Barrow, originally from a village in Saddleworth, Yorkshire, has lived in Pembrokeshire, for almost 40 years.

She has an MA in Creative Writing with the University of Wales Trinity St. David’s College, Carmarthen, a BA (Hons) in Literature with the Open University and a Diploma in Drama from Swansea University. She has had short stories, plays, reviews and articles, published throughout the British Isles and has won several poetry competitions. She has written three children’s books and a fiction built on fact book about the drug Diethylstilboestrol for the charity DESAction. UK. She gives talks on creative writing, the research she has carried out for her books on the Suffragettes, the Black and Tans and POW camps in the UK.

She is also a Creative Writing tutor for Pembrokeshire County Council’s Lifelong Learning Scheme.