Book excerpt: A moving true story of a young girl escaping hardship and coming of age in the Second World War.Margaret Ford grew up with her older brother Bobby in the mill town of Blackburn, England. Spending her early childhood living between her grandparents' rural pub and her parents' small terraced house, she thought they were a happy family. She was too young to understand her mother's sadness or that her father was gambling away what little money he earned. When she was ten, her father abandoned them, leaving her mother struggling to survive. Aged thirteen, Margaret made the hard decision to leave school and got a job in the dye works to help pay the rent. Later that year, war broke out.Coming of age in the Second World War, Margaret learned to live for the moment. As the boys she grew up with were killed in action, and Blackburn was bombed, she snatched happiness where she could find it. By the time she was seventeen, she was a regular at the dance halls, where the young soldiers were eager to court her. But her childhood sweetheart, Raymond, was thousands of miles away, serving on a submarine in the Far East. Would she ever see him again?Poignant yet heartwarming, A Daughter's Choice brilliantly evokes a lost world, seen through the eyes of a courageous and spirited young woman who never gave up on her dreams.