ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Emma Blair was a pen name for Scottish actor and author Iain Blair, who began writing in his spare time and whose first novel, Where No Man Cries, was published in 1982. During a writing career spanning three decades he produced some thirty novels, but his true identity remained a secret until 1998 when his novel Flower of Scotland was nominated for the RNA Romantic Novel of the Year award. He was one of Britain’s most popular authors and his books among the most borrowed from libraries.
Iain Blair died in July 2011.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
The book Maggie Jordan by Emma Blair is about a vibrant and courageous woman Maggie Jordan named after the book. The book was originally published in 1990. Set in the 1930s and 1940s, “Maggie Jordan” traces the life of a young Scottish woman from the carpet mills of Glasgow to the battlefields of the Spanish Civil War. Maggie Jordan. Praise for Emma Blair:’An engaging novel and the characters are endearing – a good holiday read’ Historical Novels. All the tragedy and passion you could hope for .Romantic fiction pure and simple and the best sort – direct, warm and hugely readable. Women’s fiction at an excellent level. ‘Emma Blair explores the complex and difficult nature of human emotions in this passionately written novel’.
THE PLOT:
Seventeen year old Emma Blair was living with her beautiful family and also working in The Haven Hotel in the village of Heymouth. The time when most of Maggie Jordan’s family are killed in the freak flood in the small coastal village of Heymouth. Now her only living family is her elder sister Laura and her husband John McNair with their twins. In the middle of all the unfortunes in Heymouth, Maggie Jordan encountered Howard Taft, the journalist who is one the persons, going to be the reason for her happiness. After the loss of her family Maggi Jordan moved along with her elder sister Laura and John to Glasgow. There she managed to find herself a job in Glasgow carpet mills. But her poor fate also followed her there in the form of John who tried to rape her. In between she met Nevil Sanderson in Glasgow carpet mills where she is working, with whom she got engaged.
Nevil Sanderson suddenly decides he must go to Spain and join the Republicans in their fight against Franco. Although she struggles on without him, Maggie eventually realises her place is by his side and journeys to Spain to join him. But the newly promoted Nevil has become distant and ruthless, and is fiercely jealous of her new friendship with American journalist Howard Taft. Years later, married and with an eight-year-old daughter, Maggie has returned to Glasgow. Astonished when Howard reappears, bringing light and laughter back into her life, she is forced to take decisions – decisions which threaten to destroy even the vibrant and courageous Maggie Jordan.
FAVOURITE LINES:
‘But all the middle of the valley was a place to rest in, to sit and think that troubles were not if we would not make them. To know the sea outside the hill, but never to behold it”
“Every time he looked at the line and wizened face it was as though he’d been punched hard in the stomach”.
“That was a job which never got any easier, particularly where children were concerned. Just her luck to be in charge of the ward that morning. Just her rotten luck!”
The author was trying to tell us the struggles and how much pain a woman can bear. But he dragged a little extreme by playing with a woman’s pain. After all she is a human.
