Chasing the Dream — Janet MacLeod Trotter

1920: Millie escapes the bleak pit village of Craston and eviction when her mother poses as a widow to start a new life running the station hotel in Ashborough. Haunted by childhood poverty Millie sees security and happiness in the form of handsome but wayward Dan Nixon. Dan pursues his own dream of playing professional football as a means of escaping the hardship and dangers of the mines and for a while it seems their dreams will come true. But as tragedy strikes, Millie's dreams begin to unravel and when a terrible, long-kept secret is exposed, her endurance is tested to the limit. Passionate, dramatic, and spanning the 1920s to the 1950s, Chasing the Dream is a compelling story about the cost of ambition and the sacrifices we make for love, with a wonderfully warm and compassionate heroine.