Tides Of Destiny By Sally Redmayne

The ‘Must Read’ book this Winter
Let Tides of Destiny sweep you away from the dark winter nights to the dazzling, swirling dance floors of wartime Blackpool.

With the publication of her second novel in seven years, 87 year old Manchester author Sally Redmayne shows it’s never too late to achieve your lifetime’s ambition.

Born and brought up in the famous seaside resort, Sally Redmayne was 80 years old when she transported her readers back to the end of the Great War with her first novel Sigh with the Tide, a story of love and betrayal between two neighbouring Blackpool boarding house families.

She had always wanted to become a writer and was even sent by her teacher for a job as a cub reporter at the Backpool Gazette on leaving school at the age of 14, but was thwarted in her ambitions by being interviewed for the wrong job and ended up in the typing pool.

It wasn’t until she had retired that she had a chance to attend a creative writing course in her adopted home town of Bury, Manchester which gave her the confidence to draw on her own vivid memories of her grandparents’ Blackpool boarding house as a starting point for her first novel, Sigh with the Tide,

Tides of Destiny, the second novel in her romantic family saga series turns the spotlight onto the dance floors of the Tower and Winter Gardens, brilliantly capturing the flavour of wartime Blackpool as well as the timeless passions that beat at the heart of family life.

Sally Redmayne draws on her own breathless wartime teenage years, danced away in the Blackpool ballrooms where she regularly enjoyed the thrill of dancing to top class dance bands such as The Squadronnaires, She gives a delightfully authentic voice to her diverse cast of characters, including exotic wartime visitors to the Blackpool Rhythm Club which she helped run, among whom were the locally billeted American airmen who brought a welcome note of fun into a drab world of rationing and austerity.

Tides of Destiny follows the next generation of Crossleys and Tomlinsons as they play out their lives against the turbulent backdrop of the Second World War, bringing opportunity and excitement to some, but also pain and loss to others.

When Lyn’s mother Janet, discovers her daughter’s wildly inappropriate flirtation with her father’s aide de camp, she packs her off to Blackpool to kick her heels at her grandparent’s boarding house.

Elsewhere in Blackpool Alice finds herself a widow with two small children and she enters into a marriage of convenience with Alfred, a prosperous grocer with a dangerous secret.

These two women find liberation and love on the vibrant wartime dance floors of the Tower Ballroom and Winter Gardens, but as the town sees its first GI’s and the war intensifies, both women are engulfed by the tide of destiny that will see lovers and families torn apart, sometimes for ever.

Tides of Destiny is a story of passion, loss and renewal that shows the resilience of ordinary people who find themselves caught up in extraordinary times. It is written with a warmth and liveliness that will keep the you reading to the very last page.

An extract from Tides of Desiny is available to read at www.authorsonline.co.uk

Imprint: Bright Pen

Available in paperback (£9.99) and ebook (£3.95 ) from http://authorsonline.co.uk and the That's Books online Amazon bookstore.