Shipyard Girls Under the Mistletoe
This, we are told, is the eleventh and penultimate outing for the Sunderland girls working in the wartime shipyards along the River Wear. Opening with a prologue set on Christmas Day in 1919, more than twenty years before the main story, a detailed and intriguing insight is given into the background of one of the novel’s compelling storylines. The main protagonists in this book are Dorothy, Gloria, and Helen, and through them we are given a glimpse of what life was really like in the industrial North East when the men were at war. However, not all wars are fought on battlefields, and in this novel, the Shipyard Girls face their own battles, with love, life and family at the core.
Nancy Revell is an investigative journalist, and this shines through her writing, which is free-flowing and full of impeccably researched details. Her description of the psychiatric hospital brings you right inside the now-demolished Cherry Knowle Mental Health facility in Ryhope. Her storytelling and characters are exceptional, and totally believable. Her villainous Havelock and Miriam are every bit as enjoyable as the eponymous heroines. At the end of the book Nancy Revell writes a letter to her readers talking about the various kinds of love which drive the plot. This is a great touch, and certainly love in its many forms is the very essence of this great story. Hopefully the end of the war will not mark the end of the Wearside ladies’ stories. Their return to post-war life must have great scope for Revell to continue.
