A Strong Hand to Hold - Tapa dura

When ARP warden Jenny O'Leary opens a telegram one morning in 1940, grief threatens to engulf her. Her dearest younger brother, Anthony, has been tragically killed in action. And it's the very same day that, numb with her own grief, she is to save a girl whose loss is far greater than her own...Linda Prosser is just twelve years old when a bomb explosion instantly kills her family and leaves her crushed beneath a mass of debris. It's Jenny who crawls through a dust-filled tunnel to reach a girl who has nothing left in the world. Jenny offers Linda not just a strong hand to hold in the dark, but a home and friendship that is to last through the years. But then Linda falls in love with a man that Jenny cannot but hate. Has her debt to Jenny been repaid? Must she sacrifice her future happiness for her friend?

Anne Bennett was born and brought up in Birmingham. She taught as a school teacher there but has recently moved to Wales with her husband and two youngest children.