Come Rain, Come Shine is a novel about hopes and dreams and what happens when circumstances change and cut right across the plans people make. Friends and family, as well as writers and historians, have enabled me to be accurate about the detail of 1960 to 1966, but without one person in particular this novel would not be in print.
As I worked on Clare and Andrew’s story, I began to realize what happened to them in the 1960s was already beginning to happen to so many as a consequence of the financial crash of 2008. The hopes of young and old in many places and at all levels in society were put at risk and threatened with failure.
Publishing was no exception, so that, by the time I completed Come Rain, Come Shine the possibility of it ever seeing the light of day had receded dramatically. Libraries were closing, both in the UK and in America, and funds for buying books seriously reduced. The climate had changed for me just as it had for Clare and Andrew.
In the event, I have been very fortunate. Edwin Buckhalter, Chairman of Severn House, did accept Come Rain, Come Shine even in this hostile climate. As a result of his generous act, I have been able to complete a century of Irish history as seen through the eyes of one ordinary family. So it is to Edwin and all my friends at Severn House that I gratefully dedicate this book. Without them, the Hamiltons would have lived and died unknown and unacknowledged.
Anne Doughty
January 2012