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Cheryl Burman

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Keepers Kindle Edition

by Cheryl Burman (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.1 564 ratings

Book 1 of 1: Keepers

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Chill with a Book Premier Readers' Award

'A treat to savour' Discovering Diamonds

‘… a beautifully written book, uplifting & heart warming. I read it one session.’

‘This book gives a new meaning to the phrase 'a page turner'. I couldn't put it down. Intricately plotted, the characters were hypnotically believable.’

At eight months pregnant, Raine shouldn’t be on a jolting bus crawling through snow searching for her husband. He might not want to be found. She might not want to find him.

It’s 1951, Australia, and while Raine’s marriage to the good looking but moody Teddy was unplanned, all seems well despite their uncertain start. Cash is short, but their baby thrives and they get by. Then Teddy disappears, sending a telegram which may or may not be the reason for his desertion. Grieving and furious in equal measure, Raine’s struggles to cope are made harder when she realises she’s carrying their second child.

Her willing helpmate is the faithful, devoted Alf - Teddy’s best friend since their wartime Cockney childhood. He’s always looked out for Raine. He’d love to do so forever, he tells her. Has Raine given her heart to the wrong man?

When Teddy is found, his reluctance to return forces Raine to act. With an unwilling Alf beside her, she sets out on a punishing journey to track her husband down. She needs to look him in the eye. She needs to discover the truth of their love.

'Keepers is historical fiction, literary fiction, women’s fiction, and bitter-sweet romance all seamlessly combined in a reading experience you won’t soon forget.'

Walking in the Rain, the sequel to Keepers, is available on Amazon.

From the Publisher

Raine's life wasn't meant to be this difficult – not now.


Raine's dreams are shattered - again. She hadn’t opened the telegram immediately. Kookaburras notwithstanding, telegrams are carriers of grief. When she opened it in the evening, after she soothed Stevie to sleep, after she made cocoa and took it to the sagging couch, drawing her legs underneath her and placing the cocoa on the low table, after she had done all that and taken a deep breath ... she did indeed find grief.	Teddy has dreams too - impossible ones. Like Raine and Alf laughed at Teddy wanting to make the baby’s chest of drawers, Raine dismissing the idea of him building a chest of drawers, not understanding that’s what he wants to do. He doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life hammering floorboards, but it’s what he’s forced to do right now to feed them all, let alone save anything to one day buy a proper house.	Alf's dreams might have a chance. Maybe. Alf’s stomach is warm from where Raine’s head pressed against him. He’s glowing inside too, with the satisfied contentment of being able to comfort her. Is this his chance? After all this time. It isn’t moonlight and roses, but he’ll never get moonlight and roses with Raine, not while he’s merely a terrific friend. He has to reach out, take whatever chance he has. He coughs, draws on all his courage.

Take a teaspoon of family history, add a cup of love for her home country and a kilo of imagination ....

Cheryl Burman was mulling over bits of family lore she'd grown up with as a child in Australia, when it occurred to her she could over-dramatise reality and get a good story out of these morsels. Keepers is the result, and readers agree with her.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08WHFWV98
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Holborn House Ltd (April 2, 2021)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 2, 2021
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1513 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 321 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #37,124 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #6 in Historical Australian & Oceanian Fiction
- #141 in 20th Century Historical Romance (Books)
- #430 in Women's Historical Fiction

Customer Reviews:
4.1 564 ratings

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Cheryl Burman

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Cheryl Burman grew up as the child forever reading on her bed. But as this was Australia, she was also often tempted outside to the beach and the yabby creeks near her suburban home. When she moved to the Forest of Dean in SW England she, like Tolkien and Rowling, was inspired to write. Given she is lucky enough to live in a place chock-a-block full of history, legend and myth, there is much to draw on. She does so, as well as on her own childhood in Australia.

She started with middle grade fantasy, discovered a taste for historical fiction, also that short stories and flash can be fun, and now she has moved on to historical fantasy. She likes a challenge and a change.

As Cheryl Mayo, she is a former Chair of Dean Writers Circle and a founder of Dean Scribblers, which encourages the creative writing spark in young people in the community.

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4.1 out of 5

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Mark Scott Piper

A Skillfully Written, Compelling Read

Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2022

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If you have any interest in historical fiction, then you’ll love Cheryl Burman’s Keepers as much as I did. Burman thrusts her readers into a world of poverty and hardship in Australia during the late 40s and early 50s. We’re right there with her characters in that environment. Clearly, she has done her research. Keepers is the story of family, friendship, love, personal sacrifice, hardship, and coming of age in less-than-ideal circumstances.

Burman has a knack for creating a melancholy tone that provides an undertone for the entire novel. That tone moves the story along smoothly--even when the lives we’re tracking are full of ups and downs. The narrative switches back and forth in time, and the point of view switches between the main characters Raine, Teddy, and Alf. That could lead to reader confusion, but in Burman’s deft hand, we never get lost in the action or the plot.

We’re given so much authentic detail in the novel that we feel the sights, sounds, and smells of the cramped quarters these characters experience. We can almost hear the sound of our boots crunching the snow, and we can feel the warmth of holding an infant close to shield it from an unforgiving world. The weather is almost another character in the story.

The characters are likable and relatable, with some uncomfortable exceptions, but this is Raine’s story. Her emotional and physical journey draws us in from the first page and never lets us go. We share her pain, frustration, love, and determination. She is a strong young woman who manages to cope with whatever life throws her way. She suffers more than she should have to along the way, but we’re rooting for her to succeed the whole time. Whether she’s successful or not isn’t revealed until the very end. You’ll have to read Keepers to find out for yourself.

Keepers is historical fiction, literary fiction, women’s fiction, and bitter-sweet romance all seamlessly combined in a reading experience you won’t soon forget.

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AKL

a true gem and absolute delight

Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2021

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You know when you come across a book by chance and you start reading… and it turns out to be a true gem and absolute delight? Keepers was one of those books.

Cheryl Burman’s writing drew me in immediately. Her style is vivid, descriptive, and of high literary quality (sadly not something that can be said for every book these days). She starts the story with a scene out of the main character’s life—a young mother in 1950s Australia, abandoned by her husband, trying to make ends meet and deal with the demands of life in a small rustic, isolated cabin. The author then transports the reader back in time to where it all began, leading up to how the main character, Raine, found herself in her desolate situation… and what happens from there.

Intellectually, Burman had my buy-in from the start—as soon as she began telling the back story and bringing in the surrounding characters, I was emotionally invested, too. I found myself unable to set down the book, reading into the wee hours of the night, wanting to find out how the story would unfold. She kept me guessing until the final paragraph! My only disappointment was that the book had to end. I’m hoping the author will write a sequel (or a few)—I’d love to learn more about the lives of some of the secondary characters in Keepers.

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Kindle Customer

Good read

Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2024

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Interesting story about post world war 2 and how people lived after being transported to Australia from England. The characters felt like real people that made you feel for them and happy when they were able to make their world a better place.

One person found this helpful

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Rue S

A historical romance in 1950s Australia wrought with metaphor and emotional turbulence... powerful

Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2021

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Keepers by Cheryl Burman is a historical romance that explores 1950s Australia alongside a group of youth stricken by the end of WWII, struggling to find their place in a world that’s changing due to the yielding of time and tragedy. With descriptions that are like gems in a coal mine of fraught desires and confusion, this painstakingly researched book explores how they fit in relationships that become entangled in self-worth and fear of further abandonment and trauma.

Hands down, fans of historical fiction should give this book a go. There are so many details to pick up in this novel that had to have been purposely researched and detailed for the sake of authenticity. This is the hallmark of good historical fiction: being true to the time as much as can be done with the research materials available.

Fans of romance will enjoy this love triangle with true-to-life, intricate emotional entanglements. The romance and relationships themselves are complex. Burman doesn’t take the easy, cliche way out by any means, and keeps us guessing until the very end. Each character has so much texture and complexity, with unique backgrounds and reactions to similar situations. Yes, there is a lot of miscommunication and mistakes made concerning motivations on the part of the characters, but it’s done in a way that’s natural and understandable, rather than just to feed intentioned drama.

The descriptions? Wow. I can’t get over how immersive the experience of this novel is, not just about describing scenery, buildings, or even actions, but metaphors for thoughts and emotions. It’s sophisticated with Burman’s fingerprints all over every sentence, down to where each comma lays.

Despite being a decent size novel, over 300 pages, I read Keepers quickly, devouring it. And that is my final testament to the strength of this novel. It dealt with heavy subjects in a way that didn’t feel heavy or overwrought. Burman did a great job of taking our hand and traveling through an adventure of the heart with us while preserving our own.

One person found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

an interesting book

Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2024

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This novel was a bit difficult to follow with the events happening years before from the previous chapter. But the heroine was a woman of substance and she stood her ground with her wayward husband.

Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2024

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A story that slowly took hold and you could not stop reading until the end when you discovered it was 3 in the morning!

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Top reviews from other countries

Daisy Wood

A profoundly thought provoking, and beautifully written book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 2, 2024

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Keepers is a story to savour. A story of a bygone era, when nothing was really new, but people were so glad they had survived WWII. Her unique ability to draw you in to that time, so that you feel and smell the ambience, is remarkable to say the least.

We see the struggle of those such as Teddy, whose family, amongst others, took the offer of the assisted travel to Australia, from the bombed-out streets of London’s East End. Everything is alien to them, even the Nissan huts where these families were first housed. Then we have Raine, a native Australian, whose family have moved from their house to come to be near their Pop, who is in the local hospital suffering from TB. An illness which was rife in that time. Antibiotics had just been discovered.

Their friendship is fraught with doubt and misgiving, as neither trusts the other, leading to a catastrophic misunderstanding.

This story will ring so true for those who have lived through an era such as this. A time of anticipation and hope, but also one of great uncertainty, which Cheryl Burman captures perfectly in her narrative.

I loved this book, with its roller-coaster of emotions, and it was not till some way through that I truly understood the meaning of the title. Keepers is one to embrace, savour, and read again. I would highly recommend it.

Joy Finder

a must read heartbreaking romance of life after the happily ever after

Reviewed in India on July 5, 2023

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Keepers by Cheryl Burman is the bittersweet tale of a young woman in the 1950's who is desperately in love with a young man. The kind of man, mama's warn- will break your heart. This girl's sensible head keeps warning her against falling in love with him but when your knees go weak and your heart beats fast at the sight of him who has time for such paranoia? It's much easier to give into those feelings and suffer at leisure and suffer Raine does when he leaves her and disappears after a silly argument.
Now here is the twist.
Teddy, her husband's best friend, Alf is devoted to Raine . When Teddy disappears Alf steps in like a valiant knight. Who will Raine choose - the child man who is always looking for reassurances.? The man who tends to put himself first and the woman and children he is supposed to love always second or the guy who is always there for her? The awkward but loving friend who wants to be more than a friend?
Will she choose a lifetime of watching what she says and mollycoddling or choose the man who treasures her?
Keepers is all about love, but it is also about choices and the paths we take. This wonderful book by Cheryl Burman is testimony to the aching truth of many a woman today, falling in love is easy, staying in love and being there for each other through better or worse, not so much.
A definite must read for all girls with stars in their eyes who might need a bit of a reality pill. Also a must read for all romantics because the book ultimately carries the message that true love triumphs against all odds.

Jaycee

Loved this book.

Reviewed in Australia on September 4, 2023

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This was a heartwarming easy read, the characters coming to life giving me the feeling that I knew them and felt their heartache and their joy.

J Banwell

An enjoyable work of historical fiction.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 27, 2023

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I enjoyed reading historical fiction set in Australia. It made a welcome change from books set in the war, or during some other important historical event. The characters of Raine and Alf drew me from the start, but I have to admit I didn’t like Teddy at all, until the author began writing from his point of view mid-way through. Then I got to know and like him more, because I could understand where he was coming from. The romance was sincere, without being slushy, and I also liked the cast of supporting characters. Looking forward to reading the sequel.

Emma Lombard Author

This book put me through the wringer

Reviewed in Australia on April 12, 2021

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The story is told in a unique narrative that blends past and present. This took a little getting used to at first. Though it was soon clear that this was the author’s intended style throughout.

Burman’s opening chapters paint the all-too real mundane drudgery of motherhood and morning sickness—and include delightful motherly snippets like Raine washing her baby’s teaspoon, which he dropped on the floor, in her tea.
Pop’s dwindling illness is fully realised by the author—poignant and realistic with his up and down days. As someone who has dealt with a terminally ill family member, Raine’s relationship with Pop was relatable.
From his first charming smile, Teddy was a completely likeable character, until he wasn’t. He doesn’t half put poor Raine through the wringer! He’s also so maddeningly tied to his awful mother’s apron strings.

For readers looking for a dive back into the slower-paced world of a more somber time of yesteryear. It follows the everyday family and work lives of characters—capped by regular weekend dances—who are just trying to survive the hardship of post-war poverty.

If you’re after a book with slow-burning angst that has you yelling in exasperation at the characters’ unpredictable decisions, then this book is for you.

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Keepers Kindle Edition

From the Publisher

Raine's life wasn't meant to be this difficult – not now.

Raine's dreams are shattered - again.

Teddy has dreams too - impossible ones.

Alf's dreams might have a chance. Maybe.

Take a teaspoon of family history, add a cup of love for her home country and a kilo of imagination ....

Product details

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About the author

Cheryl Burman

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