Showing results for "Makers" in Sagas

Tasmania, 1874. Growing up in the impoverished tenements along the Hobart Rivulet, Harriet Brown is used to doing whatever it takes to survive. Including, at just twelve years old, shearing off her hair and pretending to be a boy to secure a job as label-paster at the George Peacock and Sons jam factory. Four years later, the deceit becomes too much to bear and Harriet risks everything on the chance at a future with her ambitious friend and workmate Henry Jones. But this decision forces her into a new deception: play the role of expert jam maker, or else be cast out onto the streets.

Pembrokeshire, Wales, 2020. Serious illness has forced Eleanor Wilder to leave her life in London, close her antique shop and return to the family farm in Pembrokeshire. Her instinct is to hide from the world but when her parents bring her to a family reunion at the nearby house, Cliffside, she is transfixed by a set of old family photographs. One of the images is of a woman in theatrical dress, labelled ‘Esme Blood'—a name that is familiar to Eleanor through a set of Victorian tarot cards and diaries that she found through her shop.

This is a multigenerational saga of immigrant dreams and sweatshop realities, labor strikes and women's rights. It is the story of Lena Rothman, a shirtwaist maker and active suffragette whose plans get derailed when she falls in love with her best friend's boyfriend - Jake Brenner, a passionate labor organizer determined to lead the shirtwaist makers on a high-stakes strike - and Daniel Cowan, a brilliant and ambitious night-school student hobbled by a shameful past. Fate draws them together. Emotions bind them to each other. But secrets will tear them apart.

In the shadow of loss, disgrace and ill-health, unmarried mother Netta Nichol must watch her child being brought up by her farming father and stepmother. Exiled from her beloved Galloway, she seeks refuge in a Yorkshire mill town where she finds solace in sewing for her son. With the help of local friends, she makes her dream of creating beautiful wedding dresses come true, believing this is the one dress she may never get the chance to wear - in a time of rationing and shortages, no small achievement.