The Young Wives

Sheila Brophy’s hopes and dreams are those of any young Dublin girl. She longs to fall in love and get married. When she leaves school and starts work on the cosmetics counter at Brown Thomas for a while she thinks she is in heaven and then she wants something more. Meeting Fergus seems to be a dream come true. He is older than her, in the British Army and fond of his drink but he loves her and Sheila doesn’t hesitate when he proposes. Although their marriage will mean leaving Dublin, she is too much in love to care.
It is 1961 when Sheila finds herself and her twin baby girls with three other women bound for North Germany to join their soldier husbands. It is Lizzie with her three children who has most in common with her. They and Beth, who is desperately trying for a baby, become firm friends. It is the fourth woman Yvette who seems to be the outsider. It is her husband Victor who has his own reasons for not becoming too friendly. With her expensive clothes and secret life she appears to be self sufficient. However Yvette desperately needs their friendship and it is only when she discovers something about her husband that is almost too terrible to tell that she is able to ask for the help she must have to survive.
Army life isolates the women and they find themselves thrown together. Sheila, Lizzie and Beth are in and out of each other’s houses, sharing confidences and giving each other the support they need. Even so, Sheila longs for Dublin. Fergus, always fond of a drink, now spends every evening in the Mess and Sheila wants to go home. She makes a decision she immediately regrets but being stubborn she sticks with it. She knows that time will heal one way or another and the end of the novel brings an outcome she could only have dreamed of.