The Hopeful Traveller

Description

A Time of War told the story of a group of Wrens on a West Country airfield, but now the war is over, the girls are dispersed, and must learn to endure the rigours of the early post-war years, as well as the boredoms and perplexities of civilian life. While Kerren takes a job as a librarian and tries to forget her husband, who was killed in the war, her friend, Robin, has married a kind, conventional lawyer and lives in Cheltenham. But the lives of these two are still, though more remotely, linked; their reunions with other men and women from the old Station, and Kerren's efforts to adapt herself to a life far less sheltered than her wartime one, provide both comedy and some near-tragedy.Mary Hocking drew on her own experiences as an ex-Wren to trace the changes of emotional temperature, the disillusionment and the challenges, the need to realize new ways of life and the necessity to re-create themselves, experienced by her characters in this wonderful novel.

Born in in London in 1921, Mary was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's Girls School, Acton. During the Second World War she served in the Women's Royal Naval Service (Wrens) attached to the Fleet Air Arm Meteorology branch and then briefly with the Signal Section in Plymouth. Writing was in her blood. Juggling her work as a local government officer in Middlesex Education Department with writing, at first short stories for magazines and pieces for The Times Educational Supplement, she then had her first book, The Winter City, published in 1961. The book was a success and enabled Mary to relinquish her full time occupation to devote her time to writing. Even so, when she came to her beloved Lewes in 1961, she still took a part-time appointment, as a secretary, with the East Sussex Educational Psychology department. Long before family sagas had become cult viewing, she had embarked upon the 'Fairley Family' trilogy - Good Daughters, Indifferent Heroes, and Welcome Strangers - books which give her readers a faithful, realistic and uncompromising portrayal of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary times, between the years of 1933 and 1946. For many years she was an active member of the 'Monday Lit', a Lewes-based group which brought in current writers and poets to speak about their work. Equally, she was an enthusiastic supporter of Lewes Little Theatre, where she found her role as 'prompter' the most satisfying, and worshipped at the town's St Pancras RC Church.

The Hopeful Traveller, a successful sequel to the author's A Time of War, follows the ex-Wrens into Civvy Street ... It shows a convincing understanding of young women. We seem to be looking out of their eyes as we read ... The Listener Sequels are notoriously difficult to bring off, but Miss Hocking's The Hopeful Traveller is an exception. In her earlier book, A Time of War, she wrote about a group of Wrens on an airfield in the West Country. In this new one the station has been disbanded ... The main problem facing the girls is how to adapt to civilian ways ... Miss Hocking recreates this uneasy period of English domestic history with subtlety and humour. Sunday Telegraph