We'll see the Cuckoo
Jean Brown‘This is a book about ordinary people getting the maximum fun out of ordinary things’ Jean Brown
Jean Brown’s hillside farm could have come straight from the pages of a Herriot novel. She holds the reader spellbound with this saga of a warm and loving family struggling to survive the extreme hardships of farming in the Yorkshire Dales.
The book’s theme is that life is never ordinary; it’s a miracle from first to last. Year after year, the indomitable, hard-working Brown family live through the long, lean months of winter, the end of which is marked for them by the arrival of the cuckoo, confirmation that they have made it to a new spring.
What cannot be found in these pages, however, is self-pity. Every success (and there are many) is greeted with relief for it is always touch and go; every challenge met with determination and humour – a cup-half-full attitude – and it is impossible not to care about these extraordinary people, and not to be affected by their varying fortunes. Now well past retirement age, the Brown sisters still work Currer Laithe, which also warmly welcomes holidaymakers. Visitors and readers alike are beguiled by the women and their farm, and this book is sure to leave the lasting feeling that life really is good.
We’ll see the Cuckoo is the first in a series of books, followed by We'll trace the Rainbow and We'll buy another on Monday. A fourth book, We'll blow with the Wind, brings the story right up to date.
‘This account of everyday life is full of reminders of how much rural Britain has changed over the last thirty years ... Jean Brown comes across as one of life’s givers not takers; yet she writes modestly about her achievements.’ Farmers Weekly
‘If, by reading this book, you can absorb into your own existence a tiny part of its author’s outlook on life, you will be rich indeed!’ Craven Herald
