The Hills and the Valley - Hardcover

Tanner, Janet

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312033575 ISBN 13: 9780312033576

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1989

Synopsis

This novel continues the story of the community of Hillsbridge, a small mining town. With the arrival of the child evacuees from London, the life of the town is disrupted. But the events of the war only serve to highlight the drama and strife within the Hall family. "The Hills and the Valley" finishes the story begun in "The Black Mountains" and "The Emerald Valley", a story based on Janet Tanner's own family history.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

The first novels in Janet Tanner's Hillsbridge trilogy - the sparkling and well-received The Hours of Light and The Emerald Valley - introduced the Hall family, the children and grandchildren of the indomitable Charlotte Hall.  The Hills and the Valley brings the saga to a compelling conclusion.
It is 1939, and as the shadow of war falls across Britain, the people of Hillsbridge anxiously await their future, and move to confront it.
For Harry, who had long sworn to win justice for those oppressed by the greed of the coal owners, there will be the chance to bring to the struggle more power than he ever imagined.
For Alec, the grandson who has stayed closest to his roots, there will be a hearbreaking decision, followed by the stark horror of war in the East.
But for Barbara ther is another shadow that threatens to block the sun from her life forever - a long and dark shadow from the past.  At seventeen Barbara is as mercurial - and as beautiful - as her mother Amy before her.  She has led a charmed life, untouched by sadness or hardship, laughing her way out of one scrape after another.  But Barbara has an Achilles' heel - her love for Huw, whom she has cherished since she was a little girl.  And, as Amy, her mother, knows, Huw can never be hers.  Denied the man she loves, she is forced to marry out of her class to a frightening stranger; the horror she faces is, in its own way, no less powerful than the war itself.
In The Hills and The Valley, Janet Tanner has once again painted a vivid picture of the comradeships and jealousies, the tragedy and the implacable goodwill of a tightly knit community and the family at its center.

From Library Journal:

Returning to England's coal mining country, Tanner continues the family saga begun in Hours of Light (LJ 8/81) and continued in Emerald Valley (LJ 8/86). This novel spans the grim years of World War II. The heroine is rebellious, gutsy Barbara, "on the brink of womanhood" and tormented by an apparently hopeless love for her adopted brother, Alec, a Battle of Britain pilot. Well-done vignettes of disruptions wrought by the war and its aftermath add to the flavor. However, what will attract readers, including older YAs, is not history, but the complex, interrelated, and tempestous lives of the characters. In the tradition of the genre, adultery, incest, depravity, and infertility--not to mention the scourge of Nazism--are among the trials which they face and, mostly, overcome. No matter that coincidences and misunderstandings require a generous suspension of belief or that characterizations are none too probing. Somehow, readers come to care, shed a tear, and read on. This can be read on its own.
- Libby K. White, Schenectady Cty. P.L., N.Y.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0312033575
• ISBN 13: 9780312033576
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 572