With Blood and Scars

Review Excerpts

“Andre's skilful story-telling brings out a child's innocence while unflinchingly revealing what an adult would fudge or hide… This touching, sometimes shocking, tender, compassionate and in parts funny story is underpinned by the dislocations between cultures faced by refugees and their descendants, with wonderful, believable characters with whom I laughed, cried and bonded.”

“I could not put the book down. Wonderfully evocative writing which made me laugh and cry... I especially enjoyed the flashbacks to Ania's childhood set in Sixties Manchester within the Polish community.”

“This will help enormously to describing the position of the Polish emigrants’ arrival to the UK after the war, which is something that I have had to spend all my life also explaining.”

“This is a sensitively written and important social documentary about the struggles and loyalties of peoples displaced by war and politics.”

Product Description

Time is running out for Ania. She needs to ask her dying father a vital question; his answer is the key to how she will lead the rest of her life. She must force him to revisit his childhood in Poland in 1944, a time when decisions about survival were made on the spur of the moment, a place where chaos undermined all previous morality. Who is her father really? Can she bear to find out?

Another secret also torments her: an incident she filed in her memory store. Now the police have found the remains of a child in Whalley Range. Should she try to find the gang of friends from her own childhood days? Or should she keep the secret of what happened then?

This coming-of-age novel is a tale of heroic survival against all odds: a life-affirming story of courage and hope set against harrowing circumstances. It celebrates the goodness that can be found in all nations.

B. E. Andre was born in Manchester, England, the child of Polish post-war refugee parents. She was educated at Stretford Grammar and Loreto College, read French, German and Swedish at U. C. W. Aberystwyth, and completed an M. A. in Critical and Creative Writing at the University of Winchester, United Kingdom. She worked for Reuters News Agency in London.
She is the proud mother of three grown-up sons who left home when they were supposed to. She lives in Northwich, Cheshire. Among her many interests is the study of wood cabins and garden sheds. This is her debut novel.