Chasing the Dream

Tyneside Sagas #5

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

1920: Millie escapes the bleak pit village of Craston and eviction when her mother poses as a widow to start a new life running the station hotel in Ashborough. Haunted by childhood poverty Millie sees security and happiness in the form of handsome but wayward Dan Nixon. Dan pursues his own dream of playing professional football as a means of escaping the hardship and dangers of the mines and for a while it seems their dreams will come true. But as tragedy strikes, Millie’s dreams begin to unravel and when a terrible, long-kept secret is exposed, her endurance is tested to the limit.

Passionate, dramatic, and spanning the 1920s to the 1950s, Chasing the Dream is a compelling story about the cost of ambition and the sacrifices we make for love, with a wonderfully warm and compassionate heroine.

Genres: Fiction

464 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 12, 1998

About the author

Janet was brought up in the North East of England with her four brothers, by Scottish parents. She is a best-selling author of 24 books, including the hugely popular INDIA TEA SERIES, THE JARROW TRILOGY and a childhood memoir, BEATLES & CHIEFS, which was featured on BBC Radio Four. Her novel, THE HUNGRY HILLS, gained her a place on the shortlist of The Sunday Times’ Young Writers’ Award, and the TEA PLANTER’S DAUGHTER and IN THE FAR PASHMINA MOUNTAINS were nominated for the RNA Historical Novel Award. Her India-set novels, such as THE RAJ HOTEL SERIES, are inspired by her grandparents who lived and worked in India from the 1920s to '50s.
A graduate of Edinburgh University, she has been editor of the Clan MacLeod Magazine, a columnist on the Newcastle Journal and has had numerous short stories published in women’s magazines. Aged 18 she climbed on a bus and went to Kathmandu - the result was a mystery novel, THE VANISHING OF RUTH. Her second mystery, THE HAUNTING OF KULAH is set on the remote Outer Isles of Scotland. She has also written a Scottish historical novel, THE JACOBITE LASS, based on the epic story of Scottish heroine, Flora MacDonald.

Reviews

[Linda Quinlan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chasing the dream through a hard life

The author brought to life the hard years before WWI in England. Striving for better lives in small coal mine towns. A realistic story that made the reader feel like they were there.