A Penny a Shell - Antony J Bell

. .

Résumé :
On a winter night in 1916, inside the sprawling Barnbow munitions factory near Leeds, hundreds of women filed into Room 42 to fill shells for the Western Front. By 10:27 p.m., thirty-five of them would never walk back out. A Penny a Shell follows one day in the lives of three of those women-Eliza Wren, a charge hand carrying the weight of her family's survival...

Biographie:
and Lucy Atkinson, a timid seventeen-year-old still grieving her brother killed at the Somme. Their paths cross on the factory benches where danger is constant, mistakes are costly, and pressure for output never stops. Across twenty-four hours, the novel traces their working-class lives at home and on the line: the long walks in the dark, the aching exhaustion, the jokes and songs on the train, the quiet fears they never say aloud. Through the grit of industrial wartime Britain-TNT poisoning, relentless shifts, and the unspoken grief carried by women on the home front-the story builds toward the real explosion that devastated Room 42 on 5 December 1916. Meticulously researched and inspired by real testimonies, factory records, and the author's own family history, A Penny a Shell honours the courage, sacrifices, and unseen labour of the women who kept the war machine running. A story of resilience, friendship, and the hidden cost of war-perfect for readers of historical fiction, women's history, and true untold stories....

Sommaire:
Sarah Jennings, a sharp-tongued farm labourer with a secret she can no longer outrun...