Mother's Boy Signed first edition

London: Tinder Press, 2022. First edition, numbered limited edition for independent bookshops (589/1500) signed by the author. Hardback. 406pp. Dust jacket in a protective sleeve. Laura, a poor Cornish girls, meets her handsome husband when they are both in service in Teignmouth in 1916. They have a baby, Charles, but Laura's husband returns home from the trenches a damaged man, already ill with the tuberculosis that will soon leave her a widow. In a small, class-obsessed town she raises her son alone, working as a laundress, and gradually becomes aware that he is some kind of genius. As an intensely private young man, Charles signs up for the navy with the new rank of coder. His escape from the tight and gossipy confines of Launceston to the colour and violence of war sees him blossom as he experiences not only the possibility of death but the constant danger of a love that is as clandestine as his work. This is the story of a man who is among, yet apart from his fellows, in thrall to, yet at a distance from his mother. He is a man being shaped for a long, remarkable and revered life spent hiding in plain sight. But it is equally the story of a dauntless mother who will continue to shield him long after the dangers of war are past. Loosely based on the life of Charles Causley, the Cornish poet, and his mother Laura. Book new and unread. Dust jacket new and unclipped. Signed by the author sticker to the front.