The Chainmakers Box Set
(2021)(A book in the Chainmakers series)
An omnibus of novels by Rebecca Bryn
The Chainmakers' Daughter - ‘Some make chains. Some wear them.’ Rosie Wallace survives on three slices of bread a day. Scarred by flame and metal, she makes her life as her ancestors have: making chains for the rich chain master, Matthew Joshua. There is no hope for a better future. No hope even for a green vegetable on the table. Her life will be making chains, marrying Jack, the boy she loves, and babies every year. But when an assault by the chain master’s son threatens the very fabric of her tenuous existence, Rosie finds the courage and the reason to fight for her own survival and the lives of her family and neighbours. Set in the first decade of the 20th century The Chainmakers’ Daughter is a haunting portrayal of abject poverty, ever-present death, and modern-day slavery. The Chainmakers' Daughter is set in England, the Black Country from 1901 - 1910. Rosie is the eldest daughter of chainmakers, learning her trade at her mother’s side. Pay for women is poor, and despite working ten or twelve hours a day, starvation wages keep the chainmakers in abject poverty, while the chain masters reap the profit. Hearing that in London, agitator and socialist, Mary Macarthur, is lobbying parliament to end sweated labour, Rosie writes to her, begging her help in their desperate plight, but can one person unite the women chainmakers of Hawley Heath to strike for a living wage and defeat their rich and powerful chain master, who 's Wife - refuses to pay the legal wage? Can the white slaves of England defeat the chain master, or will Rosie's ill-considered liaison with the chain master's son lose her the man she loves and possibly end her life on the gallows? A Victorian/Edwardian political social drama, The Chainmakers' Daughter exposes the living conditions of working-class women and girl's in the early 1900s. Mary Macarthur, a socialist and the first woman to stand for parliament, founded the Anti-Sweating League, the National Federation of Women Workers, and was instrumental in getting the 1910 Wage Board Act and a legal minimum wage into law. It was a fight that took many years and culminated in the women chainmakers' strike of 1910, a strike that lasted two months. A family saga, this is the story of the fight of ordinary working women for a fair day's pay for a fair day's work that paved the pay for a national minimum wage and equality for women.
The Chainmaker's Wife - England 1911: following the successful strike by women chainmakers for the legal minimum wage, and the death of the chain master, Matthew Joshua, Jack and Rosie find themselves on the other side of the fence when they are thrust into running the chain factory for Matthew's widow, Marion. Along with their new responsibilities, Jack and Rosie have to contend with national strikes, riots, and shortages. Ever the activist, Rosie defies Jack and is gaoled when fighting for women's suffrage, while Marion plots to write Jack out of Rosie's life and steal Rosie’s daughter Emma. Jack's attempt to keep Rosie safe at home by betraying her trust in the most underhand way backfires spectacularly. Can they find forgiveness, yet again? The outbreak of war brings new challenges to an already fraught relationship, and both determine to do their bit for the war effort with potentially devastating consequences.
The Chain Mistress - Raised by strong women who fought for the national minimum wage and votes for women in the early 1900s, Emma is looking for a cause. The depression that followed WW1 sees her joining hunger marches to London, but it's discovering she has a Jewish cousin, Hanne, in Germany, that turns her life upside-down. As Nazi storm clouds gather over Europe, Emma determines to get Hanne and her family to safety in England, or at least, get Hanne's little son, Asher, out on a Kindertransport. She doesn't reckon on the depth of Hitler's tyranny or countries closing their borders to refugees.
Genre: Historical
The Chainmaker's Wife - England 1911: following the successful strike by women chainmakers for the legal minimum wage, and the death of the chain master, Matthew Joshua, Jack and Rosie find themselves on the other side of the fence when they are thrust into running the chain factory for Matthew's widow, Marion. Along with their new responsibilities, Jack and Rosie have to contend with national strikes, riots, and shortages. Ever the activist, Rosie defies Jack and is gaoled when fighting for women's suffrage, while Marion plots to write Jack out of Rosie's life and steal Rosie’s daughter Emma. Jack's attempt to keep Rosie safe at home by betraying her trust in the most underhand way backfires spectacularly. Can they find forgiveness, yet again? The outbreak of war brings new challenges to an already fraught relationship, and both determine to do their bit for the war effort with potentially devastating consequences.
The Chain Mistress - Raised by strong women who fought for the national minimum wage and votes for women in the early 1900s, Emma is looking for a cause. The depression that followed WW1 sees her joining hunger marches to London, but it's discovering she has a Jewish cousin, Hanne, in Germany, that turns her life upside-down. As Nazi storm clouds gather over Europe, Emma determines to get Hanne and her family to safety in England, or at least, get Hanne's little son, Asher, out on a Kindertransport. She doesn't reckon on the depth of Hitler's tyranny or countries closing their borders to refugees.
Genre: Historical
Used availability for Rebecca Bryn's The Chainmakers Box Set