The Soundtrack of Their Lives

Opera Singer Alice Neil-Gregory agreed to marry Amos Bell, train driver of the Flying Scotsman. She wishes to continue her career; Amos wants children. The couple acquires a home, and Amos has to deal with her opinionated sister, Bunty, who in 1932 married George Wills, in a Busby Berkeley-style wedding. During the celebrations, the pregnant Alice, carrying her third baby, passed out. Bunty's honeymoon has to be cancelled!

Amos' world is flipped upside down as Alice becomes sicker with each of her four pregnancies, while Bunty and Alice continue their suffragist activities and were delighted when, in 1927 both women could now vote. She instilled in her three daughters opinions on politics and being leading lights in their community. Biddy, their eldest, becomes a shop steward. Madge argues with her father each time she sees him, and Dorothy, their cleverest child, loves music and mathematics. With her last child, the much-wanted boy arrives. Named Roy, in Amos' eyes he can do no wrong.

Amos' world is flipped upside down as Alice becomes sicker with all her four pregnancies. Balancing his job with four children is a mammoth task, but Alice, who is trying to keep her marriage on an even keel, organises a holiday in Skegness. The famed Billy Cotton Big Band asks her to sing with them. Would she abandon her family and go on tour with them?

But WWII intervenes, and Hull, their home city, becomes the most bombed city in Northern England as the Germans loosen their extra wares before flying home across the North Sea. Amos builds a bomb shelter, which Alice refuses to sleep in, so no one sees her growing pain from ovarian cancer.

After being called to remove a train crash in Darlington, Amos begins a dalliance with Alice's cousin, Mattie. All family arguments come to a head on their eldest daughter's 21st birthday.

This family lived in Hull, Yorkshire. They are the authors' family; a heart-wrenching novel of family pain, holding long-lasting grudges of a dysfunctional family.