The Girl at Change Alley (The Sheffield Sagas, 2)
Louisa Leigh reluctantly scrapes a squalid living through prostitution but inadvertently goes further to the bad because her friend Ginny fancies Louisa’s neighbour, handsome Joe, bully-boy for a top union boss. Joe’s Mafia-like job is to ‘persuade’ employers in the proliferating, dangerous yet lucrative steel industry to hire union workers, pay well, and protect them; defiant employers become targets of extreme threat. On one such retaliatory night mission, Louisa insists on taking Ginny’s place as lookout; thus she’s the last person to comfort an innocent victim dying from the bombing. Now deeply traumatised, guilt gnaws incessantly, although the police have no leads. Worse, her burgeoning, unwanted pregnancy demands desperate measures. Despite the loving ministrations of old friends and a kind new suitor, she feels she must brave it alone.
Set against real events (the 1860s Sheffield ‘Outrages’), this tale embodies several struggles: that of Louisa, workers’ rights, and the then not-legally-recognized unions. Clague’s well-researched, competent storytelling raises the bar with depth of character, narrative simplicity, and scenic portrayals. She continually mentions the daily grime, street filth and sooty air from a smoke-belching multi-chimney skyline which obscures clean fields and better lives beyond. Quotidian 19th-century life is central, steel workers’ conditions and equipment are accurately detailed, and for those who also enjoy Yorkshire dialect, it’s a must.
