Fancy woman - Irene Carr

The harsh urban life of 1900s Sunderland is no place for beautiful, innocent Laura whose determined spirit brings nothing but trouble. In love with wealthy Ralph, she flees to London, rejected by his family and threatened by her cruel stepfather. But there she finds only heartache and treachery.

Amidst the hardship and brutality of World War I she is forced to think twice about everything she holds dear, and when the bloodshed finally ceases she faces another struggle - with her past. The fancy woman must return to the scornful streets of her birthplace; unbeknown to her, it may offer love, in the last place she'd ever imagine looking.

Irene Carr was born and brought up on the river in Monkwearmouth, Sunderland, in the 1930s. As her father and brother worked in the local shipyards and her mother was a barmaid at the beginning of the century she was well acquainted with the setting and times of the world she recreated in her sagas. Irene Carr died in 2006.