Reviewed by Ashleigh Neame
Ask any collier's family: making one pay check last from one week to the next is HARD. What happens if your breadwinner falls ill? What if he can't work for a day? Or even a week?
This is the life of Sarah Hawke. Brought up by her mother and the man she calls her 'Step-da', Sarah has lived as a miners daughter since she was two. She is used to living in a 1-bedroom house, sleeping in the kitchen and 'bathing in a tub in front of the range.' Having been told that her real father had died of consumption, Sarah holds no hope of her situation changing in any way, especially when she is in love with a young miner named Gordy. However, when her 'step-da' has a stroke and it looks as if Sarah will be forced into 'skivvying', her real father, Jock Hawke, owner of a vast shipping empire, shows up with an unbelievable proposition: go and live with him and have everything that she could possibly want. Sarah is sorely tempted (wouldn't you be?) but when she discovers the catch, she becomes hesitant. If Sarah chooses to live with Jock, she must never return to Netherton, the mining town in which she lives. In return, her father will pay her mother 100 pounds PLUS, double her 'step-da's' normal pay check every week.
Sarah's mother does not want her to go. 'Your father has...moods,' she says. 'I forbid you to go and live with him.' Sarah ignores this and goes to live with her father. Perhaps it was the promise of riches that enticed her? Guess again. She chooses to live with him for the sake of her mothers wellbeing. She arrives at 'Steillsmuir', the palatial manor that her father built. To Sarah, it is magnificent, but her most wonderful luxuries are the fact that she has a real bed, and she can also have a proper bath, twice every day if she wants!
You would think that suddenly going from having nothing to having everything would go to her head, but it does not. She manages to stay grounded and develops a love of learning (something that I think all teachers would love in their students!). She studies bookkeeping, accountancy, literacy classics, and even helps her father with his business. But not only does she have a head for numbers, she also develops a taste for art. When she sees one of her father's employee's paintings, she commisions a work by him and gets him into art school, paying for his fees as well. The employee, Adam, will become Sarah's partner towards the end of the book, when they both get kidnapped during the Boer/Afrikaner war in Africa.
As we learn early on, Sarah's father has 'moods.' These 'moods' turn out to be mild schizophrenia, becoming full blown schizophrenia when he discovers that his wife, Sarah's mother, has committed suicide over the death of Sarah's 'step-da'. Because Sarah is away on a trip to the West Indies with her fiance, Captain Matthew Wilson, to recover from the smallpox, she returns to a mess in which she is on the verge of losing everything, and takes over her fathers business.
Even when one of her fathers most trusted employees plots to bring the business down with a rival company, she fights her way back up to the top, enlisting the help of an old flame, Ian Monteith. She leaves her STD ridden fiance, marries Ian Monteith (becoming Viscountess Ascog), has a 'wee baby boy' named Robert, stays staunch when her husband dies in a riding accident, and falls for the man who once loved her when she was naive, Adam Tennant (the painter who's tuition fees she paid). Throughout tumultuous years, Sarah remains an inspiration to any female wanting to make it in what we call a "man's world".
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