Them Roper Girls
David G Bailey
Paperback
Four sisters. Sixty years. One family shaped by love, secrets and survival.
First edition
- ISBN 9781800422261
- Published Jul 2022
- Paperback
229 x 152mm (222 pages)
They were beauties all right, them Roper girls – but sometimes even four aces don't make a winning hand.
In an unsettled household in the 1950s, how will the sisters come up from their shipwrecked childhood? Facing issues including domestic and sexual abuse, physical and mental illness, they struggle to offer their own children a better legacy. Follow them over sixty years to see if all the siblings make it safely to shore.
Angela: Whatever rumours you may have heard, I never knew Dad say my third sister Karen wasn't his.
Janet: She had promised that on her sixteenth birthday she would finally let him go all the way.
Lucy: I think Jan was away at a Guides' camp when I got run over.
Karen: Don't think I'll be rambling on like Ange... I wouldn't want to leave you only her version, talk about unreliable memoirs.
This book is also available on
Kindle.
David G Bailey was born in Lincolnshire and mainly schooled in the Isle of Ely, also studying in the Fens and the Black Forest.
He has lived in the USA, Caribbean and South America as well as the UK. Currently based in the Midlands, he travels to write reports on insurance markets around the world. Researching and producing for publication reports the length of novels may have instilled more discipline in David's creative writing. In 2021 his first novel 'Seventeen' came out, an adventure fantasy story aimed at and beyond young adults.
From 'Seventeen''s mainly masculine world of Pirates, Knights, Army and Westerners, 'Them Roper Girls returns to our own. With humour and compassion it traces in their own voices the lives of four sisters over more than sixty years from their 1950s childhood, as each tries to make her own way in the world against many challenges - as often from within the family as outside it!
To read more of and about David's work, including a quarterly newsletter and new content daily comprising extracts from diaries and other writing over more than fifty years, visit his website www.davidgbailey.com. Follow David on X
here.
… a vivid, sometimes visceral story of the inside of a family, through the eyes of ‘unreliable narrators’ … full of the detail of lives that are fully lived, revealing so much in their individual and vivid ways. It is a fascinating and enjoyable book which I found entertaining and full of insight into realistic lives.
Joules Barham @northernreader
I became immersed in this expertly crafted story and found myself at times with tears streaming from eyes and at other times laughing out loud.
Leanne Dagan @leannebookstagram
The story unfolds like completing a jigsaw, filling in the details of the characters and their lives over time to arrive at the final picture – the story of a family. It is gritty and raw in places, uncomfortable at times, joyous in others, totally relatable.
C J Bunn
a paean to a working-class way of life and its resilience through adversity.
Allan Gambles
I would say stick with this one, it is an interesting story, not always an easy read due to the subject matter but one that you carry in your heart.
Zoé @zooloosbookdiary
“If you’re thinking of self-publishing, I hope you don't go at it alone. With a team like SilverWood behind you, you have the support you need to publish the best work you believe in.”
J A Higgins
