Why a Booktrail?
1917: You have to keep running if you want to survive . . .
1917: You have to keep running if you want to survive . . .
When her husband returns shell-shocked and broken from the Great War and his mother makes her life a misery, Betty Wellow discovers how bitter and hard life can truly be. But it is not until a devastating storm sweeps through their small fishing village and endangers her life, that she sees her chance to escape – and takes it.
Fleeing to Bristol, she changes her name to Mabel Brook and takes a position as a maid. But tragedy strikes once more after the sudden death of her mistress and she is cast back onto the streets.
Penniless and alone Mabel suffers a brutal attack before being rescued by a psychic named Nora Nightingale. There she gets her first taste of those who receive messages from the dead and realises she may have this gift herself.
But it isn’t long before Mabel receives her own message and is forced back to the very place she has escaped. A place of heartbreak and perhaps even murder – but Mabel realises that to secure her future she must confront her past one last time.
Hallsands
Hallsands was a small village where fishing was a major way of live due to its position on the coast. Plans were made in the 1890s to start dredging the area to provide sand and gravel for expansion of the nearby naval yard. However, too much was taken and the village collapsed into the sea in 1917. The villagers’ fight for compensation took seven years.
Betty then moves from Bristol to Dorchester and learn about each place as she lives there. There’s the birth of electricity, the bustle of the city compared to the more remote Dorset. She often finds that the people of Devon are referred to as ‘country bumpkins’ and this bothers how people might see her. Dorchester is also the place where the camp for the prisoners of war is a shock to her.
Bristol provides much excitement. The Clifton suspension bridge and the birth of the railway are still very much talk of the time. Great ways of travel are being celebrated and the sense of freedom is acute. Betty finds this particularly good.
Destination: Devon, Hallsands, Dorchester, Bristol Author/guide: Lesley Pearse Departure Time: 1917
Back to Results