Poplar in the industrialised East End of London is an unforgiving place for a widow with small children. Having taken up inadvertently with a lout, Mrs Connell soon regrets it. THE IRISH GIRL is her daughter Ivy, who aged just thirteen is left to care for her younger brother Fred after a terrible incident.

Ivy and Fred flee, and while they would be safe in the convent school, they discover a bus load of orphans being sent away to Australia, and mingle. The time is between the wars, and Britain’s economy is by no means good. Sid Cotter has followed the children, as they witnessed his attack on their mother, who was left for dead. Their fear communicates itself to an alert orphan, Lenny Brown, and he helps them escape with younger orphan Arthur to Wales instead. The next section of the tale follows the four children on a ferry across the Irish Sea to Carraig on the Blackwater, where the Connells’ parents came from and they may still have relatives.

This turns out to be a much better alternative, as we see. In fact, I think it may be a little like rose-tinted glasses. I’m sure readers would like Ireland of the 1930s to have been like this but maybe life wasn’t so sweet and providential. People left the area because there was no work, and in 1939, no social welfare. Roads were bad and many people drove a horse and cart. The Church is shown as holding strong sway, but in a kindly way, if often neglectful of the poor and helpless. So it’s hard to see four extra mouths to feed being so welcome, though Lenny is old enough to be of good use on a farm, which always needs hands.

The war arrives, and the oldest pair, Lenny and Ivy, tell that part. By the end, I had got mixed up with Lenny and his new friend Jack and their relatives, but I was interested in the outcome and how everyone’s lives were changed. This isn’t quite a romance, but people fall in love.

THE IRISH GIRL is one of the women’s fiction books by Sandy Taylor, who has some similar-sounding titles about runaways, Irish nannies and Irish boarding houses. While times were taut and distressing, it’s good to think that people remained decent and welcoming, caring for children and setting as good an example as they might. The tale could be read by older YA readers and adults, particularly women. I previously read The Girls From See-Saw Lane, which was like stepping back in time to the 1960s.