The gripping story of a world – and a family – at war. The Rowlands, powerful and rich, are at the centre of British high society, but they are blind to the changes that the Great War will bring. For the younger Rowlands, the excitement of war becomes a bloody reality in the mud-filled trenches of Flanders. For the older generation left at home, they must learn to swim with the new tide or face total ruin. But this isn’t just a war for the upper classes. The Strattons, who have worked in the Rowland’s factories for two generations, find themselves fighting with them as shells explode and death surrounds them. The war will prove a great leveller, one that could bring the aristocracy down, and lift the working classes up. Not only class will be put to the test, for, when all the men are gone, it is time for women to enter the work force, taking the roles thought to have been impossible and improper for them in the past.
First published in 1979, Now, God Be Thanked explores living at war from the perspectives of the young aristocratic officers, the working men who volunteered and showed themselves equal to those previously thought their ‘betters’, the men that stayed at home maintaining industry, the women who waited for their husbands and sons, often in vain, and the young women who had to carve out a new identity for themselves in a changing world.
