A Place to Call Home?

About the Book

A Place to Call Home? by Lynda Smith is set in 1936, a time between the two world wars, but Jacob’s story begins in 1905. He is a Russian Jewish immigrant whose parents and younger sister are desperate to escape the escalating danger of the Russian pogroms. They embark on a long, perilous sea journey and arrive in the northwest of England where, at the age of ten years, Jacob starts a new life in his adopted country. His ambition is to be a successful businessman, and he achieves that goal. His life becomes even more complicated when he falls in love with one of his female employees. They enter into an affair, resulting in the birth of a son, who is blissfully unaware that Jacob is his father. Torn between his loyalty to his wife and daughters, his deeply embedded Jewish roots, and his mistress and his son, Jacob is in constant turmoil about what to do so as to cause the least amount of hurt and pain to all the people he holds dear. The story takes into account the horror of the Great War, in which Jacob enlisted as a boy solider in 1916. Threaded throughout this story are the themes of socio-economic disparity, religious bigotry, ignorance, and anti-Semitism.

About the Author

Lynda Smith was born in Manchester in the north of England in 1946. She enjoyed a typical working-class childhood. She married at the age of twenty-one but is now divorced. Lynda has three adult children ages forty-four, forty-two, and twenty-five. Ms Smith had to take early retirement because of poor health and so decided to renew her interest in writing. She chose to rework a story she had written thirty years ago – which she thoroughly enjoyed doing. She has been lucky to have a supportive family trying unsuccessfully to drag her into the techno world of the twenty-first century (like most of her contemporaries, she is lost!). Without the support of her wonderful family, Lynda Smith could never have completed this book. She is especially grateful for the encouragement from her young grandsons, who gave some of their precious after-school time to help her. She can never thank them enough. Ms Smith would like to say to any would-be writers out there, “Grasp the mettle and have a go to fulfil your dream. If I can do it, then anyone can!” Now retired and living alone, the author’s time is her own, and she can choose whenever she wants to write.