The Power Of Dreams

Author: Rosie Harris

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Synopsis: Taken From The Book

After losing both her parents, sixteen-year-old Merrion Roberts is left to bring up her baby sister. Unable to cope alone, she teams up with Rhonda Rees, a trained milliner, who also has a young baby.

They share rooms in notorious Tiger Bay in Cardiff, struggling to make ends meet. In time, though, they are able to open up a little shop and it seems as if life is looking up for both young women.

But fate soon intervenes and they are reduced to living in even greater squalor, barely able to eke out enough money to support themselves let alone their two children. Meanwhile, Merrion’s brother and her childhood sweetheart have both gone to sea and she has almost given up hope of ever seeing them alive again…..

About The Author:

Rosie Harris was born in Cardiff and grew up there, and later, in Dorset, in the West Country. She spent many years living in Merseyside and has now settled, with her family, in Buckinghamshire, where she writes full time.

She has had a large amount of work, both fiction and non-fiction, published and although she still occasionally writes short stories, her first love is 1920s and 1930s romantic fiction sagas, drawn from her knowledge of Wales and Merseyside, where most of them are set.

My Review Of ‘The Power Of Dreams:’

A good, no nonsense, Welsh saga. with few real surprises and a predictable ending, I still really enjoyed the book.

It was written sympathetically and poignantly, to reflect both, the hardships of the Welsh mining communities of the early 1920s, when life was cheap, mourning for a loss was short and a widow and her family could find themselves homeless and penniless, without a moments thought. Also for the plight of women, whose lives were lived in an increasing spiral of shortages, in overcrowded, dire living conditions, but without the energy or time to complain.

Where, after death or accident, families were split up indiscriminately and often daughters were thrust into becoming mothers themselves for younger siblings, surviving by whatever means necessary.

This is Merrion’s lot, when she meets Rhonda, who comes from a much more privileged background, with an education and a profession, but finds herself in living similar conditions, through a whole different set of prejudices, as she is a single mother.

Rosie Harris, pulls the the girls’ lives together, in an almost seamless way. The only difference between them, is that Rhonda is out to snare herself a husband and a father for her daughter, to change their fortunes and their lives, whilst Merrion, usually the practical one,  has a dream, that she clings to from her previous life  in the Welsh Valleys….

The girls work together, to do something, they could only have dreamed of and open their own business, but Rhonda’s, thoughtless, desperate bid for a family life, leads to devastating consequences and whilst their one true friend is there to offer them support and encouragement, Merrion still clings on to her dream….

It’s an emotional, roller-coaster of a story, with Merrion trying hard not bite the hand that feeds her, but unable to commit her love, to a man her worships her, stoic and determined that her life will change eventually.

A good easy read, written with a good knowledge of her subject and very descriptive.

I shall be waiting for the release of Rosie’s latest Welsh saga, ‘Ambitious Love’, paperback edition, November 2010