Frances Donaldson: A Woman's War: Letters to a Soldier in the Second World War - Softcover

Deakin, Rose; Donaldson, Frances

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0992972345 ISBN 13: 9780992972349

Publisher: EVE. Eve Editions Edenbridge, 2017

Synopsis

One woman’s World War II. From silk stockings to mud and gumboots. Can she win this battle?
These letters inspire determination and endeavour in everyone.
With her soldier husband, Jack, away fighting the war, with 2 young children to care for, Frankie bought a farm and determined to live off it. Could an emotionally fragile young mother survive the ordeal?
During 6 long years of war, she learned to farm, battling with the antagonism of the men she was trying to manage while coping with small children and no money. War was a test of relationships, character and endurance.
A Woman’s War tells how she conquered WWII. A motivational tale from riches to rags, from joy to sorrow, and, at the end of the war together again with Jack, rejoicing. The book is illustrated with letters and contemporary photographs. Read this inspiring story and share her trials today.
Frances Donaldson would not have called herself a feminist, but her strong aspirational character, independence and determination make this almost a feminist tract, showing in detail how much a woman can achieve in difficult circumstances. She not only showed determination but took on physical tasks which most modern men would find difficult. She overcame the opposition of the members of the man's world in which she found herself and rose to top the ranks of farmers in the war, to be invited to broadcast to Britain and America and to write 2 books about it - working at night after a full day's hard activity on the farm. Her letters to her husband Jack are sometimes tearful, often sad but in the end the letters of a fighter, a perfectionist and an inspiring achiever.

About this title

About the Author:

Rose Deakin is the daughter of Frances Donaldson and has used letters in written WW2 in her childhood, part of which she remembers. Frances Donaldson became an established and respected writer and biographer after the war. She won the Wolfson History prize for her biography of Edward VIII which has been described in reviews as changing history.
Rose Deakin wrote 4 books in the 1980s about the early days of Micro-computers and has always written features articles both in England and Chile, where she lived from 1999 till 2014.

Review:

"Every now and again as a journalist you hear a story that sounds interesting and the more you find out about it the more extraordinary it becomes. This is one of those. ....  Wartime tales and extraordinary deeds wrapped up with local heritage are very much our thing at Focus and the Herald." - Gill Sutherland, The Stratford Herald

It reads like a thriller.  The letters themselves are so compelling - they have more or less made my December.  (Reader: PB)
Lovely to hear several of the people that I gave 'A Woman's War' to saying they hated having to put it down when they got to the end. (Reader: AB)

As a contemporary account of agriculture during World War II, and of women and children's lives during the long absence of their men, these letters, spontaneous,unselfconscious and candid, are fascinating.  They also amount to a'warts and all' portrait of someone who was clearly a remarkable woman. (Jessica Mann: Bookoxygen.com)

About this edition

• Publisher: EVE. Eve Editions Edenbridge
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0992972345
• ISBN 13: 9780992972349
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 382