"In the United Kingdom, there is a thriving and profitable literary marketplace for "clogs and shawls" fiction. Books in the genre are typically written by women for middle-class women old enough to remember what life was like during the eras in which many clogs and shawls plots are set. The story arc of any given example is essentially the same, putting different names to formulaic tales of English rural or industrial poverty, wartime hardships, lost or unrequited love, and, ultimately, triumph over adversity. Ann Chamberlin's family memoir "Clogs and Shawls" is therefore appropriately titled. Chamberlin's story is a true to life example of clogs and shawls fiction. It tells of Chamberlin's Mormon grandmother and her seven sisters from Yorkshire, England. The sisters shared a remarkable capacity to endure hard lives with pride, and imbued in their daughters and granddaughters an understanding of self-sacrifice and the value of family. Chamberlin's mother immigrated from England to Salt Lake City, a move that Chamberlin details with an engaging and thoughtful mixture of clever humor, touching pathos, and a tolerance for mistakes, a kind of storytelling Chamberlin shines on her own life in the last part of the manuscript"-- Provided by publisher.
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