Setting: England Genres: 20th Century, Historical Fiction
Format: eBook
July 1914: Britain is in turmoil as WW1 begins to change the world. While the young men disappear
off to foreign battlefields, the women left at home throw themselves into jobs meant for the boys.
Hiding her privileged background and her suffragette past, Constance Copeland signs up to be a
Clippie - collecting money and giving out tickets - on the trams, despite her parents’ disapproval.
Constance, now known as Connie, soon finds there is more to life than the wealth she was born into
and she soon makes fast friends with lively fellow Clippies, Betty and Jean, as well as growing closer
to the charming, gentle Inspector Robert Caldwell.
But Connie is haunted by another secret; and if it comes out, it could destroy her new life.
After war ends and the men return to take back their roles, will Connie find that she can return to
her previous existence? Or has she been changed forever by seeing a new world through the tram
windows?
I’m seeing a lot more books recently about World War I. The second World War has been a popular subject in historical fiction for a while so I’m glad to see other eras getting more notice.
In this book a family is dealing with the changes brought about by the war. The family fortune is fading because investments are worth less than before. Young women are getting radicalized by the suffragette movement. Connie is an upper class woman who was sent to jail for her part in a suffragette riot. This fact keeps coming back to haunt her. She’s considered unfit for marriage so she sets out to get a job. This horrifies her conservative father.
Clippies were people who took money and tickets on trams. Women were being reluctantly allowed to do this job because able-bodied men were away. In this job Connie is mixing with people from different classes for the first time.
She is also required to face up to some things that she went along with as a suffragette. They handed out white flowers to men who they felt should be in the Army but weren’t. They declared them to be cowards without knowing anything about their circumstances. It was a very nasty thing to do and it was nice to see this story tackle that head on by making Connie have to work with a man who she had previously publicly labeled a coward.
I love this cover. I’m looking forward to reading more from this author.
Book tour through Rachel’s Random Resources
That’s a topic that I don’t know much about. I love learning that women worked during World War I in some of the same ways and for the same reasons as they did during World War II.