Rally ’Round the Flag

“A timely reminder of how the past colours the future”

Mary Cleeves

Rally ’Round the Flag is a thrilling historical novel set during the American Civil war.

The story begins in the mid-19th century in a large, Lancashire cotton mill,

which never stops production for 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Here a family with rich and privileged men controls the lives of the desperately poor men, women and children who are forced to work for them...or be turned out onto the street with no income nor roof over their heads.

In 1861 events move to the USA, where the first real battle of the Civil War started.

The history of the (first) Battle of Bull Run is told realistically until, close to its end, it takes on an alternative life as a result of just one military action, which historically changes the remaining years of war. Senior General in the Confederate Army Robert E. Lee at that moment speaks of how he now sees war in this new version of victory: “Once you get 'em on the run don’t stop. Never give up the pursuit.”

This fascinating account of the war, doomed to kill a quarter of the entire population
of the USA, leads the reader through many of the major locations and actions of the war. The grim reality of the five years from 1861 describes both the true historical characters, as well as the three imagined young Englishmen whose lives now lie in the USA. Here they are destined to see, and even to experience at first-hand, the appalling bloodshed, death and destruction of a war so often fought at very close quarters. Here a brother could find his father or his son aiming a rifle at him across a battlefield; a general could be responsible for the death even of his grandson.

The story roars faster and faster through the hell of shot and shell.

Cannons, and shells from these cannons, and also from mortars, were designed to slice through great swathes of human flesh, while at close quarters Bowie knives appeared to rip out the throats of an enemy fighting for his own life within an arm’s reach.

The bodies of the enemy lay scattered across innumerable battlefields

and became food for the crows. An observer of a huge battle recorded in his diary that he had seen: “Entire regiments disappeared in a few minutes. Legs, arms, knapsacks and rifles thrust high into the air and then scattered on the bloody grass.”

The reader may ask: “Can history be changed by the alteration of one small event?”

But is there more than a little similarity in the 19th century between slavery in the USA and the penury, desperate hardship and death from disease walking the streets of Oldham, as well as the lack of any security existing for all those working in the mills, factories and mines of Great Britain?

One part of the same American country wants to destroy the neighbour it has lived with peacefully for more than one hundred and fifty years.

An extraordinary read awaits you...if you rally ’round the flag, but which flag do you choose?

Stigmata of Auschwitz

The Stigmata of Auschwitz is the brief story of the life and love of Rebekah and Gabriel.

The two main characters of the story are a young Jewish couple whose lives bringing up their young child are cut short and sacrificed to an evil Nazi ideology.

The story takes place between March 1938 to September 1941, in the time of the Shoah (the Holocaust).

Gabriel is from Budapest in Hungary, where he is sent on a mission to Munkács in Western Ukraine. There he meets Rebekah. They fall in love, marry and settle in Munkács, where the population is 42% Jewish.

In Munkács Gabriel and Rebekah build up a successful business and public life: he becomes a councillor representing the Jewish community, while she is a member of the Union of Jewish Women. To complete their enviable lifestyle, they have a much-loved baby son.

But their dream is destroyed by the antisemitism unleashed at the outbreak of the Second World War; their life together is ruined by the ruling fascist elite. Consequently, they have departed to Auschwitz, where they are murdered.

However, their two-year-old son is rescued and raised by their neighbour.

Stigmata of Auschwitz Part 2

The Stigmata of Auschwitz is the brief story of the life and love of Rebekah and Gabriel.

The two main characters of the story are a young Jewish couple whose lives bringing up their young child are cut short and sacrificed to an evil Nazi ideology.

The story takes place between March 1938 to September 1941, in the time of the Shoah (the Holocaust).

Gabriel is from Budapest in Hungary, where he is sent on a mission to Munkács in Western Ukraine. There he meets Rebekah. They fall in love, marry, and settle in Munkács, where the population is 42% Jewish.

In Munkács, Gabriel and Rebekah build up a successful business and public life: he becomes a councillor representing the Jewish community, while she is a member of the Union of Jewish Women. To complete their enviable lifestyle, they have a much-loved baby son.

But their dream is destroyed by the antisemitism unleashed at the outbreak of the Second World War; their life together is ruined by the ruling fascist elite. Consequently, they departed to Auschwitz, where they are murdered.

However, their two-year-old son is rescued and raised by their neighbour.

Survival: A Story of Friendship

It is a true story based on 13 years of research: the story of friendship between a Jewish boy, Freddy and his Christian friend, Helmut (who are separated by the political turmoil of the aftermath of the First World War in Germany), who obliged Freddy and Freddy’s family to seek refuge in France. It is also the story of friendship between Freddy and George, Freddy’s classmate whom Freddy meets in school in Paris. Moreover, it is also the story of Sigmund, whose patriotic blindness impacted his and his family’s life; the story of Nellie, who left Germany for Colombia before Nellie’s parents sought refuge in France and whose mission would be to reunite the family in a peaceful and friendly country.

Furthermore, the novel also emphasises the emotional costs of the First World War and its indirect result on the onset of the Second World War.

Survival: A Story of Friendship – Part 2

Survival: A Story of Friendship – Part 2 is about the voyage Freddy and his mother, Helene, take to escape Europe and the ravages of World War II. After promising Sigmund on his deathbed that they would reunite the family in a peaceful and friendly country, they make their way via ship to Colombia, the country Nellie had made her home just as the Nazi movement in Germany was gaining momentum. After their safe arrival, Freddy is forced to look for work in order to support his mother and himself while adjusting to new surroundings at the same time. After some fortuitous, work-related encounters, Freddy decides to not only run his own lingerie business but produce the raw materials he needs himself.

This is the story of how someone who was unable to complete school or go to university, due to strictly unfortunate circumstances, had the vision and skills to found a company that would provide jobs and well-being. Thus giving back to the country that granted him what the German Nazi government had taken away from him: his nationality.

The Blackpool Landlady and Son

When 18-year-old Helen Ashton meets Joe McCarthy on the moors of Northumberland she instantly falls in love, certain that her humdrum life had taken a new turn. And for several years it did.

On the eve of the First World War, Helen learns that she is pregnant with Joe’s child, but before she can tell him, he enlists in the army and is despatched to war. She never heard from Joe again, and believed him dead.

When their son, Ben, was born, Helen, in mounting desperation, agreed to marry a retired police inspector with whom she had two children.

In time, her husband of convenience leaves Helen for another woman, and she finds herself on her own in the coastal resort of Blackpool with three young children with only a penurious future to look forward to. But fate intervenes, and with growing confidence Helen turns their home into a holiday hotel and begins welcoming guests. From one she learns that her beloved Joe had not died, but had been discharged into a sanatorium where he languished, a shadow of his former self, depressed, uncertain, confused … and lost, lacking the courage to reconnect with Helen.

By the time of Helen’s death, Joe is living a reclusive life, and his son, Ben, married with children of his own, takes over the Blackpool hotel. It is Ben’s wife, childhood friend Mary, who tracks down Ben’s father, finally persuading Ben to meet him … on the day Joe dies.

The Cedars of Beckenham

The Mystery of an Antique German Doll reunites members of a family torn apart during The Third Reich of Nazi Germany.

This family saga, starting in the leafy suburb of Beckenham on the borders of Kent and London, begins in 1930 in the comfortable world of four British upper-middle class families blind to the impending changes that are about to threaten not only their world, but everyone else’s world, too.

A doll belonging to the Abuthnott family becomes the catalyst that brings about two sides of the Rubenstein family, who were able to escape from Germany in the late 1930s finding refuge in the United States of America and in the British Mandate of Palestine.

Along the way, the horrors of the Blitz and the British struggle for survival are enacted out against the parallel Germanic horror of holocaust separation. The survivors in the United States, Great Britain and Israel adapt to a new world as it unfolds through the second half of the 20th century, until by the chance sale of a German Biedermeier doll at Sotheby’s in New York, their separate paths are brought together in 2017.

The four Beckenham families adapt to their changing lifestyles witnessing a rich tapestry of 20th century history taking the reader all over the world with its beauty, passion and prejudices.

The Enemy at Home

After the funeral, as Jack Brown stood by the grave of his father, Bill, his eyes displayed different feelings, true feelings, of anger and disgust towards his father as he muttered, “Rot in hell you old bastard.”

Jack couldn’t forgive his father for the misery he had caused him and his friend, Harold, for their arrest as deserters during World War One, when he would have known full well the penalty for desertion was the firing squad. The same went for the death of their mothers, and his sister’s escape to Canada.

Will his feelings ever get resolved?

The Munich Pursuit

Fiction based on fact, this a story of the search by the Germans and British to establish how far the other has reached in the development of a jet-engined fighter plane prior to WW2. In UK, the Germans use a dissident South-African-born engineer who lost both parents in the Boer War and harbours a resentment against the British government. Dogged police work eventually exposes him. In Germany, the British lose their experienced agent and are forced to use two reserve officers to fill the gap. The two are discovered by the German Security Forces in the act of taking photographs. They are forced to flee across Germany and France with their information, the Germans in hot pursuit. The German Security operatives have orders to kill them and retrieve the photographs. The Munich Crisis of 1938 with the threat of war causes travel chaos and in part, hinders both sides in the pursuit.

The Sash and the Crucifix

Lance-Corporal Edward Vickers, was born on the 12^th July 1900, in the Tigers Bay area of Belfast, under the shadow of Harland and Wolff Shipyard. Edward and his four friends watched some of the greatest ships ever to be built, as they towered over their streets. These five friends made a playground out of the shipyard and got to play on the decks of the greatest ship ever built, The Titanic. As they got older, WW1 shattered their lives like countless others. What they had to endure was hard to comprehend, but this first hand story had to be told. Not only was his story about WW1, but WW2 as well, where he had to fight his way through Belgium and France yet again, to get to the Dunkirk beaches.

Through his life he had some unforgettable ups, but they were overshadowed by unthinkable downs.

Edwards’s story is a remarkable one; of life through the wars, abroad and at home, and it’s a story that spans 105 years of his remarkable life.

The Wartime Adventures of Harry Harris

The Wartime Adventures of Harry Harris follows a lieutenant in the Bartonshire Light Infantry, from the outbreak of World War II until it ends, and into peacetime.
He has many hair-raising adventures and emerges a hero, much admired by his soldiers and his girlfriend, Mildred.

The Spirit of Badenoch

This book covers the environmental, historical and cultural changes to the land and inhabitants of a little valley in the Highlands of Scotland, Badenoch, stretching from pre-history to the cessation of World War 1. Bounded by the Monadhliath and Grampian ranges, with River Spey flowing through to the sea, the topography, environment and climate dictated the number of people the valley could support. Control over land and resources was fundamental in maintaining social relationships and the folk from Badenoch did it well. Australia and New Zealand provided an opportunity and a lifestyle that they could only dream of in far-off Badenoch. Land was the key. Some returned to Badenoch, having made their fortune, whilst others settled into their new homes; this book tells their stories and the story of the land they left behind.