Fire and Fury for the Tobacco Girls (The Tobacco Girls #3) by Lizzie Lane
Genre: Historical fiction, Wartime fiction, Sagas, WW2
Read: 30th September 2021
Published: 28th September 2021
★★★★ 4 stars
DESCRIPTION:
As war rages, everyone has to do their bit...
Bristol 1941
As the clouds of war grow bleaker both at home and abroad, the Tobacco Girls are determined to do their bit for King and Country. To that end Maisie Miles and Bridget Milligan become voluntary ambulance drivers.
As well as coping with the frequent air raids, Maisie is kept on her toes with three new junior employees one of whom is particularly testing.
Bridget’s heart becomes torn between family loyalty and American tobacco tycoon Lyndon O’Neill III, the man she loves.
Meanwhile Phyllis Harvey has joined the WAAF, opting to serve overseas whilst trying to escape her past. Her letters home are upbeat and her friends are initially envious of descriptions of sunshine and blue sea. The truth she hides is that life on the island of Malta is fraught with extreme food shortages, daily air raids and the fear that tomorrow might never come.
The future appears far less certain as the reality of war bites into The Tobacco Girls’ lives.
MY REVIEW:
I love wartime fiction and reading about the lives of those on the home front doing their bit for the war effort as well as those who have signed up. While the menfolk have been shipped off to fight the Germans, the womenfolk are left behind to keep the home fires burning with some volunteering or signing up with the women's services such as Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAFs), the Women's Royal Navy Service (Wrens), the Women's Volunteer Service (WVS), the Auxiliary Transport Service (ATS), the First Aid and Ambulance Service and so much more. There were many ways in which women could help the war effort besides employment at munitions factories (one of the highest paid).
It's 1941 and we return to Bristol for the third installment of this wonderful saga, FIRE AND FURY FOR THE TOBACCO GIRLS, in which we see the girls doing more than just working at the tobacco factory. When we first met them, Bridget Milligan and Phyllis Mason had taken young Maisie Miles under their wing a the factory and the women had soon become firm friends.
Maisie was from the rough end of town and running from a home life she wished to escape and from which her stepfather Frank Miles had brought the sleazy Eddie Bridgeman into their lives. Eddie, who liked his girls underage and had his sights set on Maisie, but she had the protection of the girls at the tobacco factory and soon enough that of her grandmother, Rose Wells. Now Eddie had a new interest...a new girl at the factory Carole Thomas. But Maisie was wise to Eddie's motives and vowed to protect Carole at all costs, taking her and two other girls, Pauline and Jane, under her wing at the factory and on the ambulances where Carole and Jane decided to volunteer alongside Maisie and Bridget. Added to that, she has also discovered that he has been stealing and profiteering from the jewellery of those who have been bombed out in air raids which makes her blood boil. However she needs evidence before taking matters further. But will Maisie be able to get the better of Eddie before he stakes his claim on young Carole?
Now promoted to the packing room at the tobacco factory, Bridget's life is something of a quandary. She enjoys her work at Wills and her friendship with Maisie but she longs to be with Lyndon O'Neill, the wealthy American tobacco plantation owner who won her heart in the first book. He continues his visits to London and Bristol in between return trips to the US that Bridget just wants to settle down with him. However, when Lyndon pops the question it hadn't occurred to her that she would then be relocating to America where his plantation and his work is. And now she finds herself in a conundrum. She loves Lyndon and wants to marry him, but she doesn't want to leave her family and move to America. Maisie's advice is to live in the moment as you don't know what tomorrow holds. But when Lyndon returns home believing he would be back in England before long, he is told that his services are needed in the Philipines by way of Pearl Harbour first. It would seem their reuniting will be some time off.
Meanwhile, Phyllis Harvey (nee Mason) signed up to the WAAFs at the end of the previous book, in an attempt to escape her overbearing mother-in-law who believed her place was at home waiting for her husband Robert to return. But when a telegram arrived stating Robert was missing presumed dead at Dunkirk, Phyllis saw this as an opportunity to leave the prison in which she had found herself since marrying the man who controlled her every move. Her letters home to best friends Bridget and Maisie couldn't reveal where she was or where she was heading, but enough hints dropped told the clever Bridget that she was in Gibraltar which meant she was on route to Malta. Her work as a WAAF was rewarding as well as exhausting and Malta was under constant attack from Italy, who were allied with the Germans. Still it was the perfect place to put enough distance between herself and her troubled past in the fervent hope that she could move on. Her letters to her friends were filled with sunshine and happiness, revealing nothing of the daily air raids and extreme food shortages. Phyllis swears when this war is over she never wants to see another tomato again! But then she receives news from her friends she never expected to hear...and now she doesn't know what to do with it. Of course her situation becomes more confusing when she meets handsome Australian Mick Fairbrother. What would he think of her if he knew the truth?
And then there is Carole, the new girl at the tobacco factory who has caught to attentions of Eddie Bridgeman, a thorn in many peoples' sides particularly Maisie's in the past. Living on the poverty stricken Sally Lane, Carole's mother sleeps during the day for she works on her back all night entertaining men at all hours. When she was small, Mavis used to lock Carole in the cellar whilst entertaining her gentlemen callers but now that she is older she simply throws her out of the house, telling her to stay out while she works. Carole has been known to huddle in alleys and shopfronts to keep warm. But now that she is fourteen she has started work at the tobacco factory and is all front from the first moment she walks in, giving off the air that she doesn't two hoots about being there. But Maisie knows different. She recognises something in Carole that had been in her when she first started at the factory...and she knew that there was a story behind that tough exterior. Little did she know that that story lead right to Eddie Bridgeman, the thorn in her side of her childhood.
The women come together in this series as the air raids continue to blitz Bristol as well as London and other major cities throughout the country. Bridget and Maisie began as first aiders but are then trained up as ambulance drivers, taking the younger girls as first aiders and their assistants. Bridget takes Jane while Carole accompanies Maisie where she can keep an eye on the young girl who reminds her so much of herself at that age. But the bombing brutal and some can't take the pressure or the fear and flee for their lives only to be shot down at the first instance. Phyllis had always been a good time girl but a few harsh realities taught her to face up to things and whilst serving her country overseas is also now enjoying a new-found freedom. In the couple of years since the war began, the young women have grown up in the shadow of conflict. It has brought them closer together despite distance keeping some of them apart and no matter what life throws at them they will always hold each other close at heart.
There were a few instances that occurred in the book where the story appeared to have jumped with the reader only learning of something taking place third hand in a following chapter with no hint of it having occurred when last reading of those characters. It felt a little convoluted in that respect and not so smooth a transition. Of course, the following chapter would take us to where the story continues from where we should have seen it first hand in the first place. That would be my only complaint about an otherwise engrossing story and wonderful addition to the series.
The note upon which this book ended has naturally paved the way for what we all anticipate happening next, particularly in the case of Lyndon, and yet leaves us wondering how that will play out. As for Phyllis...where does the future see her? I know I would like to see more of Carole and watch her grow into herself just as Maisie did before her. And I would like to see how the situation with Eddie is handled just as Maisie cleverly handled her stepfather. There was a little twist I had anticipated earlier on and I wonder how that will affect Eddie's pursuit of Carole.
I really enjoyed FIRE AND FURY FOR THE TOBACCO GIRLS and naturally look forward to seeing where the road takes all of them next. Although part of a series, this book suffices as a standalone but to garnish the entire backstory of each of the characters I thoroughly recommend starting at the beginning. You won't be disappointed.
Perfect for fans of wartime fiction as well as Pam Howes, Nadine Dorries, Nancy Revell and Rosie Clarke.
I would like to thank #LizzieLane, #Netgalley, #BoldwoodBooks and #RachelsRandomResources for an ARC of #FireAndFuryForTheTobaccoGirls in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
Lizzie Lane is the author of over 50 books, a number of which have been bestsellers. She was born and bred in Bristol where many of her family worked in the cigarette and cigar factories. This has inspired her new saga series for Boldwood The Tobacco Girls.
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