By the Waters of Liverpool

The third best-selling volume in the powerful story of Helen Forrester’s childhood and adolescence in poverty-stricken Liverpool during the 1930s.

Helen has managed to achieve a small measure of independence. At seventeen, she has fought and won two bitter battles with her parents, the first for the right to educate herself at evening classes, the second for the right to go out to work.

Though her parents are still as financially irresponsible as ever, wasting money while their children lack blankets, let alone proper beds, for Helen the future is brightening. She begins to make friends her own age and to develop some social life outside the home, At twenty, still never knowing the loving kiss of a man, Helen meets Harry, a strong, tall seaman, and things finally start to fall into place…

Reviews

‘Remarkable that from so bleak and unloving a background came a writer of such affectionate understanding and unsettling honesty’ Sunday Telegraph

‘What makes this writer’s self-told tale so memorable?… An absolute recall, a genius for the unforgettable detail, the rare chance of subject’
The Good Book Guide

'Should be long and widely read as an extraordinary human story and social document' Observer

About the author

Helen Forrester was born in Hoylake, Cheshire, the eldest of seven children. For many years, until she married, her home was Liverpool, a city that features prominently in her work. For many decades, she made her home with her husband and son in Alberta, Canada. Helen died in 2011 aged 92.