Miss Purdy's Class

In the New Year of 1936, Gwen Purdy, aged twenty-one, leaves her home to become a schoolteacher in a poor area of Birmingham. Her early weeks are an eye-opener: at the school she faces a class of fifty-two children, some of whose homes are among Birmingham’s very poorest. One of the teachers, the elderly Lily Drysdale, proves an inspiration, and Gwen begins to understand the appalling hardships endured by the children as she is drawn into their lives. Joey Phillips, eight years old and man of the house, looks after his dying mother and lives in fear of being sent to the orphanage. When he disappears one day to a life on the streets, Gwen is haunted by his absence. And there’s Lucy Fernandez, an epileptic. Through her, Gwen meets Daniel Fernandez, the eldest brother in a fatherless household. Gwen falls in love and is quickly engaged in his battle to win rights for the working classes. As the International Brigades are mobilized to fight in the Spanish Civil War, Gwen has to accept that Daniel has secrets in his past which she would rather not face up to…