The Stoker Trilogy, Book II

Six feet two inches, blond-haired and blue-eyed – Charlie Stoker is the handsome, highly principled son of a dead father whom he revered and a deeply religious Catholic mother. In the dark economic atmosphere of 1931, Stephen Collick, his late father’s friend and his mother’s benefactor, offers twenty-year-old Charlie the opportunity to build a commercial career in London’s East End. Charlie, already committed by his inbred sense of duty to life in a loveless marriage, soon becomes popular and successful. His remarkable ability to win friends without ever becoming too personally involved enables him to establish a wide circle of admiring customers and colleagues. Charlie is always prepared to help solve their problems.

As a lifestyle, this works. That is, until he meets Sally Cutter in 1936. For the first time in his life, Charlie discovers true love. The world continues to become a darker place and the growing menace of Hitler’s Nazi Party in Europe is echoed by Moseley’s anti-Semitic Fascists marching through Cable Street. Charlie watches helplessly as Sally’s life spins out of control.

With the threat of war ever nearer, the upright Charlie carefully devises a scheme to secure Sally’s future. But he is surprised when Sally resets the scheme on her own terms.

Tod Benjamin’s first novel was published in 2017 at the age of 81, after a long and varied life of three careers. Firstly, a five year management course led to five years as a department store manager. That was followed by twenty-five years in the chemical industry, a career that took him all over the world.

Retirement to Bournemouth to play golf and to write created the opportunity for his third career. He began to write seriously. Now, unable to play golf, he devotes most of his time to writing. With an amount of poetry, some short stories and three novels completed, Charles and Charlie, his second novel, is the first of The Stoker Trilogy. Book two, The Tallyman, continues this saga of the first half of the twentieth century through the 1930s, and the third volume, The Soldier, completes the story through World War 2 to 1950.