The Sugar Girls is a Sunday Times bestseller!

Posted By The Sugar Girls ~ 9th April 2012

We’re very pleased to announce that The Sugar Girls has entered the Sunday Times bestseller list this weekend.

We never thought we would be on the same list as Jennifer Worth’s Call The Midwife, which was a big inspiration to us while writing our book and one of the first things that got us interested in researching East End history.

Jennifer Worth’s influence on the chart is clear, with another midwife book, Maria Anderson’s Tales of a Midwife, making it in at number nine.

Babies are a hot topic, with Cathy Glass’s A Baby’s Cry – about her experiences as a foster carer – at number two and Angela Patrick’s The Baby Laundry for Unmarried Mothers at number seven.

The Sugar Girls includes two stories of young women who were sent away to have their babies at unmarried mothers’ homes in the 1940s and 1950s – Edie Tull (Lilian’s sister) and Joan Cook.

Edie became pregnant by a soldier during the Second World War, and by the time she found out he had already gone abroad to fight. When she finally got word to him that she was having his baby, he had some unexpected news for her too: he was already married.

Joan’s boyfriend Alfie was on leave from his national service when they slept together for the first time, and she got pregnant. Her mother made her quit her job at Tate & Lyle without explaining to any of her friends why she was leaving, and sent her to an unmarried mothers’ home in Highbury, North London, run by nuns. Her baby, Terry, was born in 1958 and adopted – and to this day Joan hopes that he will track her down and make contact.