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Relates a teenage girl's struggle to survive while helping her once wealthy family recover from the depression that has made their life in Liverpool almost unbearable.
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Previews available in: English
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1
Minerva's Stepchild
June 1992, Ulverscroft Large Print
Hardcover
- Largeprint edition
0708911404 9780708911402
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2
Minerva's Stepchild
December 1986, Soundings
Audio cassette
- Unabridged edition
1854960946 9781854960948
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One moment Helen was the petted eldest child of wealthy, privileged parents, disciplined and coddled by servants, dressed in silk for "best" and prim private school uniforms for "everyday." the next, she was the unpaid, half-starved housekeeper for an unemployed clerk and his harridan wife--her father and mother.
Here she tells the story of her desperate girlhood during that grim period known as the Depression. At twelve, she was plunged overnight into the most appaling poverty, plumped down in the noisome slums of South Liverpool, and forced by circumstance to be nursemaid to her youngest brother and sister, and cook-housekeeper for her sick and frantic parents. It was accepted that Helen, the oldest, would grow up to be the old-maid sister, uneducated and unskilled, forever in service to the family.
How she rebelled and won her way, step by aching step, to a life of her own is the theme of this powerful autobiography. In the course of relating her own struggles and setbacks, she gives a piercingly frank picture of privation at its most grim, seen--as few writers have been able to see it--from within and in contrast to the earlier life she had led.
The title of the book is derived from the fact that Minerva is the patron goddess of Liverpool, the city in which Helen found herself to be the archetypical stepchild. Many years later, from the perspective of 5,000 miles away, she felt compelled to write the story of those terrible years; which culminated in the resolution of the war within her family, and her personal achievement of a place in the sun.
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- Created April 1, 2008
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June 24, 2017 | Edited by ImportBot | import new book |
March 6, 2014 | Edited by Hannah Grace | Added new cover |
August 12, 2011 | Edited by ImportBot | add ia_box_id to scanned books |
April 27, 2011 | Edited by OCLC Bot | Added OCLC numbers. |
April 1, 2008 | Created by an anonymous user | Imported from Scriblio MARC record |