Give Us This Day

Adam Swann, founder of British haulage company Swann-on-Wheels, turns 70 as this concluding book in Delderfield's trilogy begins. Retired now, with his son George at the 40-year-old company's helm, Adam is far more interested in the Jubilee of Queen Victoria than in his own birthday celebration. When he learns that the business he built from nothing - with a ruby necklace "liberated" on an Eastern battlefield as his only capital - is quite possibly being robbed from within, while the besotted George pursues a mistress, the older Swann has to investigate because he does not want to believe what his sources tell him. That pause on his part costs Swann-on-Wheels dearly, as the employee who led the scheme sets fire to a warehouse and then flees. The fire destroys nearly all of the business's central hub. That sets the stage for Adam's once again taking command, as George - his mistress forgotten - admits to himself and to his father what he really needs. Which is time to experiment with what he believes to be the haulage business's future, the petrol-powered vehicle. George isn't the only one of Adam and wife Henrietta's nine children who experiences a crisis during this novel's close to 600 pages. Giles discovers his passion for politics, Hugo the prize winning athlete goes to war to please his wife and suffers tragic consequences, Helen finds herself trapped by the Boxer Rebellion in far off China...and so on, as the Swann children pass through young adulthood into middle age and the eldest grandchildren start establishing their own careers and families. Victoria's sons succeed her on the throne, first Edward and then George. As the novel concludes, August 1914 leaves Adam glad he isn't likely to live to see what the world he has known and loved - and helped to shape - will be like on the far side of the coming war. A book of breathtaking scope, that in a lesser writer's hands could all too easily have become a slogging soap opera. As expertly handled by Delderfield, though, "Give Us This Day" tells two intertwined stories - that of the Swann family, and that of their country - as both make the transition from Victoria's reign to Europe on the brink of World War I. It's history brought to life, in that cliche's best sense. --Reviewed by Nina M. Osier, author of "Granite Island"

A wonderful read about the industrialization of England and the family that lives in that era. A terrific author: Delderfield