No Lily-livered Girl (May, #4)

No Lily-livered Girl is the story of four years in the life of May Tarrant. At fourteen, in 1912, she is apprenticed to a dressmaker in Hamilton in the North Island of New Zealand. Her ten-hour working day is wearisome, town life is strange, and she is homesick for the farming country she has left. A courageous old lady recognises May's strength and tells her, "You don't look a lily-livered girl!" That her opinion was right is demonstrated as May makes friends, including a young bank clerk named Ken, enters the world of competitive swimming, and copes with a traumatic experience. The start of World War One brings another crisis to May, and when she is seventeen this determined young woman returns to the King Country and makes the biggest decision of her life.