Flower Girls

Penny lives with her husband, Andrew, and their two dogs, Monty and Aubrey, in the village of Chilworth near Guildford, Surrey.  She has three children.  Her daughter, Jemima, died in 2016.  Her two sons are married, and she has one granddaughter.  After Jemima’s death Penny did an MA in Creative Writing at Surrey University.  In writing The Flower Girls Penny drew on her mother’s and father-in-law’s experiences during WWII.  Her mother’s family in Mold took in a mother and two children evacuated from Manchester.  The mother helped in the house.  Penny’s father-in-law was evacuated to America at the start of the war at the age of 10 with his two younger brothers.  Penny and her husband have recently shared their home for a year with a Ukrainian mother and her two daughters who fled their country as war started.  Penny is a housewife.  She enjoys gardening and cold-water swimming and spent many years riding her horse, Blossom.

• Prologue – 1942; Chapter 1 Violet – September 1939; Chapter 2 Rose – September 1939; Chapter 3 Violet – A Bus, a Train and Cartwheels; Chapter 4 Rose – And a Boat; Chapter 5 Violet – The Countryside; Chapter 6 Rose – New York; Chapter 7 Violet – A New Life; Chapter 8 Rose – In New York; Chapter 9 Violet – Vi Dismounts; Chapter 10 Rose – Rose Returns; Chapter 11 Violet – Vi Runs Away; Chapter 12 Rose – Expectations; Chapter 13 Violet – Vi’s Plan; Chapter 14 Violet – Rose’s Missing Chapter; Epilogue – A Year Later