The Home Front Girls series continues with a bitter Christmas in 1940 Manchester. Sally Henshaw, her friend Betty Hughes, and a London socialite who has moved to volunteer, Lorna West-Sadler, are stunned by a twelve-hour bombing raid. CHRISTMAS FOR THE HOME FRONT GIRLS will take every ounce of courage and determination they can give.

Preparations for Christmas are underway, with Boy Scouts collecting up salvage from glass bottles to papers and metal, and the three young women are working as Women’s Volunteer Service, fire-watching and other work. A series of incendiaries just before Christmas starts the fiercest raid, and the whole city seems to be in flames that night. The rescue scenes are nail-biting, and strongly written, using the terminology of the day.  While there is definitely war trauma, the most difficult parts are dealt with through conversation, which is much easier on the reader.

With typical grit, the ladies of the city declare that the fifteen or sixteen thousand bombed-out families will be well-fed on Christmas Day. If you have only read of the Blitz in London, Manchester is a good comparison. The theatres, cathedrals and warehouses were wantonly destroyed.

Andrew Henshaw, Sally’s husband, is in a reserved occupation, a carpenter, but sadly for now he is making coffins. The raid spurs his determination to join the forces. Lorna is surprised by the reappearance in her life of her former fiancé, George Broughton, who caused her to take a breach of promise case. He seems interested in her whereabouts and helps her in rescues on the shattered street. Lorna can’t imagine they have anything to say to each other. But there he is again, moving supplies, as the women mix endless Christmas puddings.

CHRISTMAS FOR THE HOME FRONT GIRLS shows us that women were capable of so much more than they had previously been allowed to try. Here, they are driving ambulances in the pitch dark, heading off to munitions factories and managing scrap depots. Women kept Manchester on its feet. Betty, having got mixed up with a bad sort of man in the earlier books, now meets a much nicer man. I spotted a reminder that parental consent was needed to wed anyone under twenty-one years of age. They are all determined to have a social life and maintain traditions. Susanna Bavin has researched historical events in the sprawling city, and given us a Christmas story that begins with tears and ends with happiness.