Dear Doctor Lily

When Lily and Ida meet on a flight to America, they embark on a relationship that is to see them through two very different marriages. Lily wants passionately to help people, and to experience romance and adventure at the same time. Falling in love with a married man was not part of the plan. In order to escape her abusive father, Ida flees to America to marry Buddy, looking forward to a clean slate with her new husband. But is having a house and being Mrs. Someone enough for her? Married life will bring them comfort, distress, joy and tragedy in equal measure as the years unfold. Only their friendship can carry them through. First published in 1988, Dear Doctor Lily follows two women as they navigate the complexities of love, family, and friendship.

Great grand daughter to Charles Dickens, Monica (1915-1992) was born into an upper middle class family. Disillusioned with the world she was brought up in - she was expelled from St Paul's Girls' School in London for throwing her school uniform over Hammersmith Bridge - Dickens then decided to go into service, despite coming from the privileged class; her experiences as a cook and general servant would form the nucleus of her first book, One Pair Of Hands in 1939.Dickens married an American Navy officer, Roy O. Stratton, and spent much of her adult life in Massachusetts and Washington D.C., but the majority of writing continued to be set in Britain. Her book of 1953, No More Meadows, reflected her work with the NSPCC and she later helped to found the American Samaritans in Massachusetts. Between 1970 and 1971 she wrote a series of children's books known as The Worlds End Series which dealt with rescuing animals, and to some extent children. After the death of her husband in 1985, Dickens returned to England where she continued to write until her death aged 77.