The Keys to Wexhall

She holds the list that decides who gets a home. She cannot put her own family on it.

Nell Ashworth came to the new town of Wexhall with two children, one suitcase, and a husband who never got on the resettlement bus. To keep the roof over her children she takes the hardest job in a place built of strangers, running the office that decides which desperate family gets the next finished house and which waits out another winter in the freezing huts.

The town believes a man is coming for her. It is the one thing that keeps her name high enough on the list to hold a house of her own. She has told herself the lie so long it comes out smooth as a worn stair.

Then a storm breaks early, the low ground floods in the dark, and the whole raw town comes out into the rain to carry its families up to safety, and Nell understands at last that these were never strangers. But the morning after leaves sixteen families without a roof and only a handful of dry houses standing ready, and the neediest family on her list is the one she cannot say yes to without giving up the last thing she has left.

To do right by the town, she will have to tell the truth about herself, and let the house she dreamed of go to someone who needs it more.

The Keys to Wexhall is the first book in The Wexhall Chronicles, a series of warm, uplifting stories about ordinary women and the brand new town they built into a home. If you love big hearted historical fiction about community, second chances, and the quiet courage of everyday people, come down the branch line to Wexhall.