War babies

Rachel Booker's childhood is shaped by loss from the start. Her father dies owing money from gambling, and her mother, faced with keeping the household afloat, becomes so guarded that little warmth remains between them. The two women trade at the Birmingham open-air market, reselling secondhand clothing and whatever else they can scrounge to buy food.

At the market Rachel meets Danny, who becomes her first friend. Over the years their bond deepens into a young romance that offers her the tenderness she has long gone without. When World War II begins, Rachel is only sixteen and finds herself pregnant. The couple marry quickly, but Danny is soon called up for military service.

Rachel is left in Sparkbrook with a newborn and almost nothing else, and must get by alongside her neighbours as best she can. The novel asks whether Danny will return as the boy she once loved so deeply, and whether Rachel can keep her family together until then without becoming as hard as her mother.

War Babies follows ordinary people on the Birmingham home front and traces how the war altered everyone it reached.