Author(s): Theresa Tomlinson

Children's fiction

Theresa Tomlinson has established herself as a talented writer of historical fiction, particularly when pinpointing her home territory on the NE coast of England. Here in one volume are three of her most gripping novels in which she describes the courage and humour with which the fishing families face up to the hard conditions of their lives. The Flither Pickers of Sandwick Bay are the women of the community who spend their days gathering shellfish on the shore - limpets and mussels - and balting the lines for the fishermen. The story centres on young Liza Welford whose mother is haunted by an accident of the past, Liza herself and the women of the village forced to launch the lifeboat when the fishing boat belonging to her father is overturned in a storm. In THE HERRING GIRLS, when tragedy strikes the Lythe family, 13-year-old Dory joins the tough world of the Scotch herring girls in Whitby in order to earn money and save her brothers and sisters from the workhouse. Family life is destroyed for Ann and Polly Lancroft in BENEATH BURNING MOUNTAIN when the violent and merciless press-gangs invade the cliffs where men and women create alum crystals for a livelihood - and their home is wiped out by a sudden landslide. Skilfully blending fiction with reality, Theresa Tomlinson has written three moving and absorbing stories of close-knit communities of fisher-folk of a hundred years ago whose whole existence is governed by the sea.