Pearce grew up in Greater London. However, she spent her WW2 years as a child in Cornwall. This book was inspired by her memories of the Cornish town of Truro, where she worked as a librarian in her mid twenties.
One of my paternal uncles was a fisherman in his youth. So is one of my former pastors. It is an occupation that comes with more than its fair share of risks. What would one do when her father and only brother as well as her fiancee perished at sea in a storm? What complicates things more is that she was pregnant. Counting the odds, she did rather well in the book.
In my country, there is a similar tragic figure. A short time before a young woman was to be married to her fiancee, he was summoned to a Government agency and found dead the next morning. In time, she delivered their child and under went a rather unusual ceremony marrying a deceased person.
Even though in modern times, unwed Chinese girls are no longer killed by drowning, there is still a stigma to children born out of wed lock. Under Islamic rule, they even count the wedding date to the delivery date of the first born. It does seem that the fair race is treated better in England than elsewhere.
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