An excellent read. In fact, so absorbing that, when I got to a particularly exciting bit yesterday morning, I nearly missed my bus to work!

A Hardyesque chronicle covering the early years of a girl, Jenny Wilden, born into poverty and hard physical work in the Black Country. She is hived off to her grandfather who lives in an Edenic, pastoral, forest landscape in Shropshire. Although more hard work and poverty is her due, she learns to love and identify with her rural landscape, and to see its older values in contrast to the urban environments of the industrial Black Country. Her cousin David and his dad Jem in turn contrast Far Forest with the grimy excitements of North Bromwich (our Birmingham!) and the coal and smoke ridden valleys of South Wales.

Jenny and David have a hard few years of it, separately, as they learn about love and life, hardship and loss. Connected by more than their family, they lose track of each other as they follow the paths available to people of their class and time. The Boer War impacts but it's mainly environment and family that affect their lives.

A little melodramatic and Mary Webb-like at times, but this is no problem - it's an older and slower read with intricate descriptions of nature and town and the events fit in with the characters and their time. As mentioned above, at times I couldn't put it down. If Jenny and David survive all the onslaughts on their characters and very survival, then surely they deserve some respite...? ( )

As with other FBY books, this really brings to life the whole period and region. The accents of the people of the people of the Black country and Worcestershire come across strongly. FBY puts me in mind slightly of Thomas Hardy - inasmuch as the people he wrote about were real. They lived harsh and difficult lives, the ending are not always happy, or sometimes characters have some pretty bad things happen to them on the way to a happy ending. This is hugely readable, and the 550 odd pages don't seem as long as with other books. I have to confess I am writing this review when I still haven't quite finished the book, but I will finish it today, and I was by a computer so... ( )