Spare brides

de Adele Parks

New Year's Eve, 1920: the Great War is over, and a new decade of glamour beckons. But, for a generation of women who survived the trauma of war, life will never be the same. With countless men lost, it seems that only wealth and beauty will secure a husband from the few who returned, but lonely Beatrice has neither attribute. Ava has both, although she sees marriage as a restrictive cage after the freedom war allowed. Sarah paid the war's ultimate price: her husband's life. Lydia should be grateful that her own husband's desk job kept him safe, but she sees only his cowardice. This is the story of these four women.