PUBLIC BATTLES, PRIVATE WARS.

The wife of a man whose family for generations had been miners, his father the last of them. The wife of a man whose mother, an actual Woman Against Pit Closures, ran a kitchen feeding a then striking community. It is to them I dedicate this review. 

PUBLIC BATTLES, PRIVATE WARS by LAURA WILKINSON.

SOURCE: Received for review from the author.

Yorkshire 1983.

Miner's wife Mandy is stuck in a rut. At twenty-three, and trapped by domesticity, her future looks set and she wants more from life. Husband Rob is a good-looking drinker, content to spend his days in the small town where they've always lived - where Mandy can't do anything other than bake cakes and raise her children.

When Mandy's childhood friend - beautiful, clever Ruth - and Ruth's Falklands war hero husband, Dan, return to town, their homecoming is shrouded in mystery. Like in their schooldays, Mandy looks to Ruth for inspiration - but Ruth isn't all she appears.

 As conflict with the Coal Board turns into war, the men come out on strike. The community and its whole way of life is threatened. Mandy abandons her dreams of liberation from the kitchen sink and joins a support group. As the strike rumbles on, relationships are pushed to the brink, and Mandy finds out just who she is - and who her true friends are.
...... Outer back cover

FIRST SENTENCE {Prologue}: The race is about to begin, gun aimed at the pewter sky.

MEMORABLE MOMENT {Page 174}: 'I don't want my boys going down the pit. But I do want there to be a choice, for them and others, for there to be a community here. Industry. I can't imagine what it would be like without, and that's what we're fighting for. It's what I'm fighting for.'

MY THOUGHTS: Having witnessed the destruction of a mining community first-hand I knew this was going to be more of a personal read than most and as such was probably going to be either a big hit or a huge miss.

Thankfully a hit, the story of a community and in particular one woman's public battles and private wars this is a novel with a big heart.

Though essentially the story of one young woman's journey of self-fulfilment Public Battles, Private Wars intertwines the story of the struggle against pit closures, of one veterans struggle since returning from the Falklands War. Mixing fact with fiction at a time when Margaret Thatcher was regarded by some as a feminist icon whilst for many women like Mandy 'feminism' was still a dirty word. Though politics is the backdrop of the story it in no way intrudes into what is a very human tale of very real people.

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Disclaimer:  Read and reviewed on behalf of the author I was merely asked for my honest opinion, no financial compensation was asked for nor given.