Friends & Lovers Hardback: Piatkus 1993 Paperback: Bantam 1994, Riverside Books 2003 Large Print: Dales 1995 C) June Francis 1993 Set in the heart of Liverpool during the days of rock 'n' roll and the Beatles, Friends and Lovers is the evocative story of one girl's journey into womanhood... Vivien's mother Hilda had always been the black sheep of the family: the only person to have a child out of wedlock; the first person in the family to shake the dust of Liverpool off her feet and emigrate to America; the very last person Vivien had expected to see again. But then, quite suddenly, her scandalous mother returns to stir up painful memories and barely suppressed resentment. Although badly hurt by her mother's abandonment of her as a child, even more painful to Vivien is her mother's stubourn refusal to reveal the identity of her father. But undaunted, and aided by her new boyfriend Nick, Vivien turns detective. In her quest to discover who her father is, she makes an unexpected friend and finds that she and her mother have more in common than she would have expected. She also quarrels with Nick, who comes to resent her obsessive need to learn the truth. It takes a trip to America to confirm what she has begun to expect about her parentage, but is it too late to salvage her love affair? Back to Books2 Back to Main Page