Queen of the Mersey

Queen of the Mersey is a family saga revolving around the friendship between Queenie, Laura and Vera three Liverpool women and their children Mary and Hester. The story opens up on the brink of WWII where Laura is living with her boyfriend and their illegitimate daughter Hester. She meets Vera a motherly housewife and they establish a friendship. In the flat above Laura a drunk abusive woman lives with her daughter Queenie. One day the drunk leaves with a rich pimp abandoning 14 year old Queenie. Laura takes in Queenie and they become friends. After Laura's husband Roddy joins up, Laura and Vera send their daughter with Queenie to be evacuated in Wales. They live in a house that once was an old school. After a tragic incident which changes Queenie's life forever they return to Liverpool trying to forget. Overall, this was a great story. I particularly liked the discussion of WWII and the events surrounding the war. My favorite characters were Queenie and Hester. I didn't care for Mary who seemed selfish until later on in the story. I lost interest when the author began to age up the characters rapidly. Particularly didn't care about 60's Liverpool and Mary with her adult kids, or Queenie's affair. I preferred the wartime events. It seemed to me, too, that the gals were wasting their lives on undeserving men. The men seemed utterly weak. Oh, and I haven't a clue what the pic is about on the cover. It just didn't seem to represent any event from the story, unless the generic kids were meant to be the heroines as children on the beach in wales.