Greed

In ‘Four Crude Dudes and the Land of Hope’, the story is set in the days of the Californian Gold Rush. It tells how the lives of five characters who are strangers, impact upon the lives of each other and how the thief, cheat, liar and bully get their comeuppance and how the honest and God-fearing farmer of selfless disposition is rewarded.The story is set against the backcloth of a mining town in California and it provides a good taste of what the prospectors of the time would have experienced as they strove to strike it rich.

In the second story of ‘Two Crude Dames and Horace Catchpole’, the setting is in Wigan during the 1950’s. It tells of the life of Horace, a wimpish and downtrodden man who endures a life of cruelty, humiliation and bullying at the hands of two monstrous women; first his mother and then his wife, whom his mother sells him in marriage to for the princely sum of £1,000. Horace’s life becomes more and more unbearable, especially when all three start living together in order that the two greedy women can save money on housekeeping by pooling their resources. Eventually, our hapless hero has had enough and he starts to assert himself. The worm eventually turns and the two monstrous women get their comeuppance.

Both stories are suitable as a ‘cross-over’ book and can be enjoyed by any reader between the ages of 9 and 90 years of age.

William Forde: April 29th, 2013.