The Amazingly Astonishing Story : 9781781725986 : 26 Oct 2020 : The Amazingly Astonishing Story is Lucy Gannon&;s memoir of her first seventeen years. The daughter of a soldier, she lived a peripatetic early life but settled in the north west. Here, a young child, she suffered the death of her mother and was cared for by an aunt. Escape beckoned when her father remarried and the family moved south, but Lucy and her two elder brothers soon find out that they have swapped one difficult situation for another. The boys flee by joining the armed forces and Lucy is left to deal with a stepmother who mostly ignores her in an attempt to live her own life with Lucy&;s father. Lucy&;s escape is school, where her abysmal grasp of maths is mitigated by a flair for writing. Despite her talent and her love of school, she leaves at sixteen for the Women&;s Royal Army Corps, unable to escape the low expectations of her family. Vividly told, The Amazingly Astonishing Story is a classic story of a worki