Steel Girls: "This is the book I really wanted to get to. It's such an important part of Sheffield history"
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Sheffield’s Women of Steel and their incredible stories have become a passion project for Michelle Rawlins.
The journalist and Sheffield University teacher spent two years researching the incredible Women of Steel generation for a book of the same name published in 2020.
Subsequently, it’s been developed into a series of fiction books both heartwarming and heartbreaking in equal measure, but this fifth book ‘Steel Girls in the Blitz’ is one Michelle has been looking forward to, she said.
“This is the book I really wanted to get to,” she added. “I just felt this was such an important part of Sheffield history.”
Hattie, Betty and Patty return for one of the most devastating periods in Sheffield during World War II, changing the lives of thousands of war-era Sheffielders.
Michelle said: “Some became homeless, others lost loved ones, others had partners still at war. All of it is based on the Women of Steel, I could draw on all that research.
“The events that I included actually happened.”
The experiences of Ruby, a real Woman of Steel, features in the book.
Michelle said: “On the first night of the blitz she was working at a sweet shop in town and her job was to serve customers who were going to the cinema.
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“She was supposed to finish work at eight o’clock but her boss said finish at seven. At six o’clock a mouse ran across the floor and she panicked and shut up shop.
“At seven o’clock, when she was supposed to finish, the shop took a direct hit.”
Incredibly, the little mouse that frightened Ruby enough to close the shop had saved her life. Her future husband, however, would lose both his parents three nights later.
Michelle said: “My research for the Women of Steel has worked it’s way into the Steel Girls books.
“I feel very privileged to have done this. These stories really happened. That’s a big part of the book for me that I was able to tell real women’s stories.
“The Sheffield blitz was two weeks before Christmas. It was a really sad time... On the first night it was the city centre that was targetted. Women I interviewed said the city centre was like a corridor of flames.
“Some didn’t know how to get home as they had lost all their landmarks.
“The one thing that came through is that the morale of the people is what kept them going. It was that British bulldog spirit, ‘[Hitler] may destroy our city but he won’t destroy our spirit’.”
Steel Girls in the Blitz will be released on November 7, 2024. Find it and pre-order on Amazon.