cover image Only My Dreams: An English Girlhood

Only My Dreams: An English Girlhood

Hilda Ann Salusbury. Academy Chicago Publishers, $18.95 (279pp) ISBN 978-0-89733-276-7

This Englishwoman's memoir is unaffected and eloquent. Born in a Norfolk coastal town in 1906, she was the oldest of four children whose mother went off with soldiers during the ``Great War.'' The author was then only 12 but in charge of a household that included her stern Victorian father and Grannie, who gave what help she could to the hard-working child. Although the difficulties of life are vividly detailed, so are its joys, as Salusbury recalls games and small treats, to her the more precious for their rarity. The reader shares in her victories, as the spirited young woman liberates herself, progressing from menial work to a career in nursing and marriage to a man whom she lovingly recalls, telling us of his death in 1984, and that ``at 82 I keep house for myself.'' There are no complaints to be found in the book; there are recollections of sadness but also of exuberantly funny times. Illustrated. (Apr.)