HOUSE OF GRACE

A Family Saga

by Patricia M Osborne

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It’s 1950 and all sixteen-year-old Grace Granville has ever wanted is to become a successful dress designer. She dreams of owning her own fashion house and spends her spare time sketching outfits. Her father, Lord Granville, sees this frivolous activity as nonsense and wants to groom her into a good wife for someone of his choosing…

Grace is about to leave Greenemere, a boarding school in Brighton. She’s blissfully unaware of her father’s plans when she embarks on a new adventure. The quest includes a trip to Bolton’s Palais where she meets coal miner, Jack Gilmore. Grace’s life is never the same again.

Travel with Grace through two decades as she struggles with family conflict, poverty and tragedy. Is Grace strong enough to defy Lord Granville’s wishes and find true love? Will she become a successful fashion designer? Where will she turn for help?

A Word from the Author

Told using a first-person narrator, House of Grace, A Family Saga, is the first book in a trilogy, although each book may be read as a stand-alone. The novel originally began as a screen play as part of my BA degree and it was only after writing the script that I saw the potential to convert it to a novel. Inspiration was originally derived from George Orwell’s, ‘Road to Wigan Pier,’ and television dramas, Mr Selfridge and House of Elliot.

Divided into two parts, the story shows Grace, firstly as a teenager and Part 2 in adulthood. House of Grace has a romantic element, and also covers loss and determination. Written in short chapters it’s accessible for busy readers and the easy style works as a great holiday read or for curling up in an armchair by the fire. Older readers have the chance to reminisce over familiar details and younger readers can learn what things were like in the 50s and 60s.

The reader travels with Grace through two decades as she struggles with family conflict, poverty and tragedy.

(Patricia M Osborne, February 2019)