Monica

Description

The book details are as follows:

Paperback

172 pages

Size: 200mm X 130mm X 170mm

RRP: £12.99 + P&P

ISBN: 978-1-915439-88-8

This incredible new book charts the movements of a family who fled Poland to escape war but instead ended up in German Occupied France. Some of the men escaped and joined the Polish Free Army to fight alongside the British and ended up settling in South Wales. Meanwhile the women tried to maintain a semblance of normality for the children before they were to meet up again.

The people, stories and histories in this book are told from the perspective of the youngest member of the family at its heart. Her name? That varies according to where you know her from. At home with the Polish family she was called Monia. To her friends in school she was Monique. And when she was enrolled at Pontypridd Girls Grammar school, everyone knew her as Monica. Her character is based on a real person who, as you will discover, had accomplished incredible things despite all the barriers life can throw at a little girl from a working class family of coal miners in war time.

This book is a social history. It looks at the impact of war, the pace of change in the 20th Century, it asks questions of identity, of class, of the role of family, religion and politics and how they have changed down the last two generations so dramatically. It covers the Polish contribution to World War II and what post war South Wales was like.

The author Graham Loveluck-Edwards is best known for the best selling ‘Legends and Folklore of Bridgend and the Vale’ series of books, for his regular columns in the Glamorgan Star and Buddy Magazine and for his history show; History on your doorstep on Bro Radio FM.

The book is structured across the following chapters:

1. From Bardo to paradise – The circumstances leading to the family leaving Poland and arrival in France
2. Meet the family – Introduction to all the key members of the family
3. Then there was me – The back story of the central narrator
4. The day war broke out – The consequences of war in a small town
5. Home front – The men of the family go to war
6. Poles apart – When France surrenders one man doesn’t come home. Where is he?
7. Pigs and troughs – Trying to maintain a ‘normal’ life under German occupation
8. A funeral and a wedding – How do you throw a party when there’s no food or drink?
9. The Italian campaign – The Polish Free Army’s mark on World War II
10. Between a beached whale and Neptune – How it nearly all ended so badly
11. Victory in Europe – The march on Berlin and the fall out from demob
12. Land of my father – When Wales becomes the new family home
13. The great escape – How Monica escapes the clutches of abusive parents to make her own way
14. Allo. Ici Londres – When she has a family of her own – and oh how the world is different now.