1941, Liverpool

The bombs are raining down on Liverpool but seven year old feisty Alice Lacey and her two best friends Bob and Matty, have disobeyed their parents and decided to go up to Everton Hill and watch the sky set on fire. Ten years later the three are still friends and Bob is now Alice’s sweetheart. He would marry her tomorrow but Alice has ambitions to better herself and when she finally leaves the factory to work as a secretary for Hedley and Worboys’ architects she dreams of a brighter future and having some small part in rebuilding Liverpool.

But not everyone is as hopeful as Alice. ‘What Hitler started, the Corporation is finishing off,’ some are saying. Families are being ripped apart, whole streets are being demolished, friends and neighbours are being separated, and some children find themselves with nowhere to go apart from the orphanage. Orphans of the Living is the unkind name they are given, and when Alice’s father dies and her mother struggles to cope, Alice is horrified to see her brothers and sister awaiting the same fate. To make things worse, Bob after running away to sea returns with unpleasant news. Alice turns to Matty and they begin to fall in love, but it seems he is also harbouring a secret . . .

Full of nostalgia, and set against a backdrop of the Festival of Britain and the aftermath of WW2, this is a gritty emotional, heartwarming and uplifting saga; Book 2 in the Liverpool Orphans Trilogy.