The Reluctant Sinner

Description

September, 1914. Eighteen-year-old Daisy Gilbert is the star seamstress at Madam Evans' presitgious gown shop in Southampton. Although she is courting Jack, who works in the docks, her ultimate ambition is to open her own dressmaking business. Her beloved father is desperately ill with TB and Daisy is determined to find enough money to send him to a nursing home where he will get proper care. So when the flamboyant Mrs Cummings, a client of hers, suggests that Daisy work for her in the evenings as a barmaid at the Solent club, a local upmarket brothel, she accepts. Young, innocent and beautiful, Daisy proves to be popular with the club's clientele. But Madam Evans hears about this other job and fires her. Will Daisy be able to care for her father and preserve her own virtue?

June Tate was born in Southampton and spent the early years of her childhood in the Cotswolds. After leaving school she became a hairdresser on cruise ships the Queen Mary and the Mauritania, meeting many Hollywood film stars and VIPs on her travels. After her marriage to an airline pilot, she lived in Sussex and Hampshire before moving to Estoril in Portugal. June now lives in Brighton.