LISTEN: Margaret Dickinson talks about her gripping new page-turner A Mother's Sorrow
Take so-called Saga Queen Margaret Dickinson - a publishing phenomenon, writes Graham Walker.
Her exceptional talent for powerful storytelling, weaving human emotions into historical landscapes, usually in or around the two world wars, have earned her legions of fans world wide over three decades.
Now in her 80s, there's no slowing down...she continues to publish a book a year and fans won't be disappointed with her 31st captivating page-turner.
Get your hankies at the ready for A Mother’s Sorrow, her latest gripping book full of heart-rending drama, out in paperback from Thursday, May 9.
PREORDER: Get A Mother’s Sorrow by Margaret Dickinson - CLICK HERE.
it's already available in hardback, with an e-book and audio book also to follow.
LISTEN: In an exclusive chat with Graham Walker, Margaret discusses her new book, her writing process, how she creates her characters and she shares secrets, including the working title, of her next book - CLICK HERE.
Born in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, Margaret’s books are always based in the region she loves.
This latest offering, a captivating story of family, hardship and love, in the early 1900s, is set in Sheffield and Derbyshire, featuring the Buffer Girls of Sheffield’s cutlery trade, who she wrote about in a book named after them in 2016 and its sequel, Daughters of Courage.
This time their story deals with the Great War and the Sheffield Pals battalions of their men folk who worked, fought and died together. It deals with leaving loved one behind, leading to hardship and tragedy as two families stick together to weather the storm.
A Mother' Sorrow, published by Pam McMillanm it is the story of three young women. Two families united. A bond that can’t be broken.
Readers can expect an emotional roller coaster.
Margaret said: "There are sad parts in it. Obviously, you can't write about the First World War without it being sad in places. But yeah, there are happy times.
"I think the overriding thing is I've tried to bring across how people stuck together and how they helped one another certainly in places like Sheffield."W|ith the Sheffield Pals, they were all in it together. Families left at home supported each other when their men folk had gone to war.”
It begins in Sheffield,1892. Patrick Halliday rules his family with a rod of iron. He’s hard on both his wife and his elder daughter, Flora, but he spoils his youngest, Mary Ellen, because she reminds him of his beloved mother.
When Mary Ellen, aged seventeen, finds that she is pregnant, Patrick throws her out of the family home and Flora goes with her. After wandering the Derbyshire countryside for miles, they find shelter on a farm, working for their keep.
Flora must return to her job as a Buffer Girl in Sheffield’s cutlery trade, she is reunited with her friend, Evelyn Bonsor.
As both young women find love and fall pregnant, the Halliday and Bonsor families are united, despite the many trials that cross their paths.
Margaret says she has no plans to retire and regards her talent as a special gift.She said`; "It's just something I've been given. I think I have to be humbly grateful for the fact that the ideas still keep coming, you know. So yeah, I just keep going.
“I shan't stop unless something stops me. If you know what I mean?”
She revealed the working title or her next book ie No Greater Love - fans can expect it to drop this time next year.
She said: "It's about a young woman whose father has an estate and suddenly there's a huge scandal, and her family loses all its wealth - there's a huge disgrace. She goes to train as a nanny and she finds employment, eventually, with a very troubled little boy who needs her. The whole family need her. And, it goes from there."