‘The past is a dry and dusty place. Life is too short to look back and regret what we can’t change.’
At sixteen, Abi is convinced she knows everything about her family. Her mum, Rose, is strict because she mistakenly believes she can turn Abi into the perfect daughter. Abi’s nan, Gertie, couldn’t care less about her granddaughter’s messy hair and love of art rather than arithmetic and is always there with a positive word, a glass of homemade lemonade and a hug.
When Abi’s family is forced to relocate from London to Nan’s cottage perched high on a cliff in Dorset, Abi becomes an isolated misfit. She finds escape from the school bullies in a new and thrilling friendship with a local girl. But with three generations under one roof, long-kept secrets made in love begin to unravel: Gertie’s past in WWII Blitz-torn London and the fallout of her friendship with a young Canadian serviceman; Rose’s final holiday with her parents in Dorset in 1963 and an all-consuming romance just weeks before she heads off to university in Edinburgh.
Devastating revelations shake Abi to the core. Everything she believes about her life and family is turned on its head. She is forced to make the hardest decisions to save everyone she loves but not without sacrifice and making painful secrets of her own.
As the past and present lives of the three women unfold from the 1940s to the 1980s, we see how far people will go to protect the people they love.
Praise for Keep You By My Side
"A book about, love, friendship, and the reverberating echoes of the past. I did not want to put it down and now that I’ve finished it, I am bereft." —Lisa Timoney, reviewer
"From page one this book had me hooked." —Gail Atkins, reviewer
"An endearing story, tying together generations of a typical family, with quirks and heroics, traditions and secrets, all the things that make life whole." —Bonnye Reed Fry, reviewer
Callie Langridge is the best-selling author of A Time to Change. Keep You By My Side is an emotional and heart-warming tale, which will appeal to fans of books like Postcards from a Stranger by Imogen Clark and Sea of Memories by Fiona Valpy.
