Why a Booktrail?
1882: Second in the Windfell family drama series
The Windfell Family Secrets (2)
What you need to know before your trail
Charlotte Booth has fought hard to keep Ferndale Mill and her home at Windfell Manor following her traumatic first marriage. She’s now happily remarried to her childhood sweetheart Archie and their two children, Danny and Isabelle, but she’s afraid history is going to repeat itself with her children, as Danny’s head is turned by a local girl of ill-repute.
Isabelle also falls for someone less than desirable in the form of John Sidgwick, the owner of High Mill in Skipton. He was her father’s drinking buddy and not known for his kind or wise ways. Charlotte fears he’s in this relationship for his own mean. What she doesn’t realise is just how right she is.
Travel Guide
The Windfell Yorkshire Trail
Many of the places in the book are real such as Settle and Skipton and ribbleswick. Others aren’t of course, but feel real and it’s a Yorkshire sprinkled with cotton mills, water mills, farms and manor homes. Set in the 1880s, it’s old fashioned vintage style and the detail of homecooking with fresh produce will make your mouth water.
The coach from Settle to Skipton is a constant journey in the book and Settle in particular a nice place to set up a dress shop don’t you think as well as go to the Red Lion pub for a drink? Settle and Skipton are both small villages with old stone houses and plenty of former mills scattered around the hillsides. There’s one you can go inside at the top of the High street in Skipton which will more than give you the idea of what it felt and smelt like to work in one of these places. Be sure to take a walk around the river which runs around the mill so you can see and feel the force of the water.
Ribbleswick where the fictional Windfell home is located is easily accessed from Settle and the viaduct there is a tourist attraction. You can almost see the novel’s characters in the Yorkshire mist….
Streetview Maps
A) Yorkshire - Ribblesdale
C) Settle - Duke Street (shop and pub)
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
Although the second book in a series, I didn’t feel as if I missed out at all. This was a real family saga with wayward children, unsuitable marriages and a madwoman trying to spoil a new family unit. Set in the 1880s, however there is also a strong sense of community and a look into how rural communities and farms used to work. How women had fewer choices and how sometimes men would drink their livelihood and ruin their entire families, causing shame and for the woman to be cast out completely from society.
There is plenty of drama and good characters to warm to here and I felt for Charlotte trying to keep her family together despite the family secrets coming out of the woodwork. Children getting together with unsuitable partners – a problem since time began – but this time things get really complicated and you fear for the family’s fortune and happiness.
I am now going to read book one as the Yorkshire setting comes out loud and clear with Settle and Skipton’s mill community not one I’d read much about and having just visited Skipton was particularly apt! I also discovered my new favourite word in this novel : “flibbertigibbet” as in He’s had his head turned by that flibbertigibbet”. It means an unsuitable girl. Ah that Yorkshire twang and dialect throughout the book is what makes this a real saga treat.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Windfell Family Secrets (2)
Destination: Yorkshire Dales, Settle, Skipton, Ribbleswick Author/Guide: Dianne Allen Departure Time: 1882
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