Connie’s Courage

A stirring novel of passion, lost loves and one girl’s determination to conquer the odds from the author of Child of the Mersey.

When Connie Pride finds herself alone and pregnant in the rough courts of Liverpool, she despairs. Deserted by her lover, menaced by his bullying uncle, and too proud to ask her estranged family for help, there seems no hope.

Rescued from the gutter, she is offered the chance to train as a nurse at the Poor Hospital. Life becomes a whirl of hard work and long shifts, but also lively evenings at the music hall with her fellow nurses and the newly drafted soldiers. Finally Connie has a purpose in life – especially when the wounded of World War 1 start to arrive in their droves on the hospital wards. With a roof over her head and a steady wage, if she can stay out of trouble, the future looks brighter. Even love seems possible again …

But then a face from the violent past turns up to disrupt Connie’s new life and shatter her dreams. All she has built up is threatened – and she herself is in physical danger. It will take every ounce of the courage she possesses to overcome the odds – and a little help from old friends and new …

Reviews

PRAISE FOR ANNIE GROVES:

‘An engrossing story.’ My Weekly

‘A stirring and heartrending family saga…Against a backdrop of change when the suffragette movement was coming to the fore, the choices and dreams of a generation of women combine to create this passionate story.’ Liverpool Daily Post

‘Heartwrenching and uplifting in equal measure – a tragic indictment of what can happen when you swap passion for duty. Roll on the sequel!’ Take a Break Fiction Feast

About the author

Annie Groves was born and lived in the north-west of England all of her life. She was the author of the Pride family series, Ellie Pride, Connie’s Courage and Hettie of Hope Street, for which she drew upon her own family’s history, picked up from listening to her grandmother’s stories when she was a child. Her next set of novels was the World War II series Goodnight Sweetheart, Some Sunny Day, The Grafton Girls and As Time Goes By. These were followed by the Campion series, Across the Mersey, Daughters of Liverpool, The Heart of the Family, Where the Heart Is and When the Lights Go on Again, which are also based on recollections from members of her family, who come from the city of Liverpool. My Sweet Valentine follows on from Home for Christmas and London Belles and is the third in this series, which introduces a set of glorious characters living in Article Row in Holborn.
Annie Groves, whose real name was Penny Halsall, also wrote under the name of Penny Jordan and was an international bestselling author of over 170 novels with sales of over 84 million copies.
Sadly, Penny Halsall died in 2011. She left a wonderful legacy of heart-warming novels for many more fans to discover and she will be greatly missed by all who knew her.
The final books in the Article Row series, Only a Mother Knows and A Christmas Promise, will be published posthumously in 2013.