Winds of the Day

"Winds of the Day", the first novel by Howard Spring for over three years and the last one to be published in his lifetime. Like all his books, its great strength lies in unforgettable characters and in his brilliant and sensitive evocation of the periods and places he knows and loves.
And of all his wonderful characters Alice Openshaw, around whom the Winds of the Day blew fiercely, is probably the most remarkable. In the words of Alice herself, he unfolds the moving and deeply satisfying story of a young orphan servant girl who knew poverty in Manchester in the last days of Victoria's reign and who seemed doomed to a drab life of servitude.
But instead of resisting the winds, Alice yielded to them accepting all their buffets but never allowing them to deflect her from indomitably attacking the business of living.
In a story rich in humour, pathos and compassion, vibrantly alive with colourful characterization and memorable sense of period, we follow Alice's fortunes, from her final rebellion against the drudgery of "service", and the firing of her love for literature that takes her to Paris, to the idyllic Cornish holiday in the Spring of 1919 when love dramatically alters the course of her life and centres it on the beautiful horse called Dros-y-Mor where her son is to be born and grow up under the shadow of the Second World War, and where the Winds finally spend themselves.
Once again Howard Spring restores our faith in the sort of genuine down-to-earth storytelling that is all to rare nowadays.