Born And Bred: A Woman Of Courage By Rita Bradshaw

They say there are only ever six degrees of separation and when I picked up this book there was only one: not a person but a place since I was born and bred in Sunderland where this novel begins. I admit the Eastend of the town is not that familiar to me and there’s little mention of my beloved seashore but there are plenty of references to places and shops which I do recognize and they helped pave my way through the narrative.

It's an easy read, a period tale set at the fin de siècle, beginning, as it does, in 1890. It follows a format which will be familiar to readers of Rita Bradshaw novels - a formula which clearly works. An innocent heroine is lured into a world of pain from which she is forced to flee. By the end, she makes good, despite the twists and turns along the way.

In this case, Josie Gray is a beautiful young woman with the voice of an angel. She lives with her family in the poor quarter of the town and from being a child, her father, an idle layabout, has forced her to use her talent to earn money by singing in the local pub. The money she brings home contributes to the pot and more importantly, keeps him in ‘baccy and beer’.

An innocent heroine is lured into a world of pain from which she is forced to flee.Singing as usual one night in the Fiddler’s Elbow, her head is turned by the handsome Adam McGuigan whose heart is set on Josie. Like the rest of the McGuigans, known and feared for their brutal control of the area, what Adam wants, Adam gets – one way or another. He has charm and money and uses both to beguile Josie into marrying him on her sixteenth birthday, her brother’s objections having been swiftly dealt with and the blame laid squarely elsewhere.

There the dream ends, however, as Josie is quickly introduced to the reality of her husband with his callous, thoughtless and demanding behaviour. In his view, she owes him. He has dragged her out of the gutter and given her a fine life so what has she got to complain about? Plenty, it seems, since of all the family, Adam proves himself to be the worst.

She delivers a son, soon into the marriage, and is determined to protect him at all costs. When her life is put in danger, after a fight with her drunken husband, Josie bravely escapes the nightmare, taking Luke with her as she flees to America where, by dint of hard work and some luck, she becomes a successful businesswoman in her own right. She has told her son that his father is dead and that she is all the family he has got but no one can hide forever and the truth will out; reality must be faced at some point and Josie’s day of reckoning will come. The McGuigan clan will exact vengeance and Josie is not helped by the family blood which flows through her son’s veins. He has inherited more of his father’s character than his mother’s and there seems to be little she can do to steer a better path for him.

The McGuigan clan will exact vengeance and Josie is not helped by the family blood which flows through her son’s veins.Cast as out and out villains, the McGuigans are more caricature than character but no less fearsome for that. Josie is innocent of wrongdoing but not as naïve as she might be and has a strength which belies her youth. She attracts a mixture of supportive friends who do all they can for her. Set as it is, over a hundred years ago, readers can distance themselves from the hard life of ordinary working class folk which is laid bare, and their vulnerability at the hands of ruthless, cruel bullies is evident. The need to turn a blind eye and to keep the McGuigans sweet is a matter of life and death – and even when you do, you can still fall foul of their temper. While the characters interact in a natural fashion, the novel is primarily narrative-driven and if all the ends aren’t quite neatly tied at the end, it really doesn’t matter.

Bradshaw has, as I said at the start, found a successful formula and it’s easy to while away a few hours in the company of her characters as they live a different life from the one most of us will ever experience.


A Woman of Courage is published by Macmillan