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

Deakin, Rose

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0992972353 ISBN 13: 9780992972356

Publisher: Eve, Eden Valley Editions, 2017

Synopsis

What makes a 1930s society girl become a farmer? Answer the Second World War. 
This is the story of my mother, Frances Donaldson, a privileged young woman giving her all in wartime. With her soldier husband, Jack, far away and 2 young children to care for, she bought a farm in Warwickshire 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, vulnerable to the demands of the Ministry of Agriculture 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. An emotional tale from riches to rags, from joy to sorrow, and, at the end of the war together again with Jack, rejoicing. The journey is illustrated with letters and contemporary photographs. Read it and share her trials today.
Frances Donaldson would not have called herself a feminist, but her strong 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 if not impossible. 
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 achiever.

Robert Boyd wrote:
"Female farming in "The War". A laughing, crying, gripping, writer-to-be's letters to her husband through five long years of separation. She, a famous playwright's daughter from high society turned farmer, responds with candour and can-do to male dominance in the cowshed and the realities of the woman's land army volunteers. A moving must-read of feminism two generations before its time coupled with the real smell of Britain before and after Dunkirk. The fear and the relief." Robert Boyd

About this title

About the Author

Rose Deakin is the daughter of Frances Donaldson, the writer of these wartime letters. Aged from 2-7 years old during the Second World War she has memories of many of the events described and has curated and commented on the material to produce this biography of the war years. She has set up a website for this book, https: //womanswar.com

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)

Edition details

• Publisher: Eve, Eden Valley Editions
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0992972353
• ISBN 13: 9780992972356
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 348