A Handful of Happiness / This Time Next Year

A HANDFUL OF HAPPINESS - Like so many in Clydeside's dockland tenements, Jenny Gillespie suffered her share of troubles during the Great War. Firstly her fiance Robert Archer leaves her for England, a new job & another woman. Then, with her brother missing in action, she is forced to put the demands of her reletless family before the prospect of a new beginning at a Glasgow store. Her job in Dalkieth's shipyard is difficult enough but then her ex-fiance returns as both a qualified naval engineer & her new boss & he wants to rekindle their relationship.

THIS TIME NEXT YEAR - Young widow Lessie Hamilton is shocked & upset to find she shares her tenement landing with a prostitute. But when Anna McCauley begs Lessie to help disguise the fact that one of her clients has died in her bed, she agrees. Soft-hearted & desperate to buy medicine for her sick toddler she accepts the twenty shillings Anna gives her, promising herself one day to pay it back. But keeping her promise is not easy, & from that day forward the fates of Lessie & her younger brother Davie are inectricably intertwined with Anna's & the family of her deceased client..


Genre: Literary Fiction