As the Crow Flies

If your dream is big enough, not even your enemies can stop you....
Charlie Trumper's earliest memory is of hearing his grandfather's sales patter from behind his costermonger's barrow. When Grandpa Charlie dies, young Charlie wants nothing more than to follow in his footsteps - his burning ambition is to own a shop that will sell everything: 'The Biggest Barrow in the World'.
Charlie's progress from the teeming streets of Whitechapel to the elegance of Chelsea Terrace is only a few miles as the crow flies. But in Jeffrey Archer's expert hands it becomes an epic journey through the triumphs and disasters of the century, as Charlie follows a thread of love, ambition, and revenge to fulfil the dream his grandfather inspired.
©1991 Jeffrey Archer (P)2015 Pan Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Growing up in the slums of East End London, Charlie Trumper dreams of someday running his grandfather's fruit and vegetable barrow. That day comes suddenly when his grandfather dies leaving him the floundering business. With the help of Becky Salmon, an enterprising young woman, Charlie sets out to make a name for himself as "The Honest Trader". But the brutal onset of World War I takes Charlie far from home and into the path of a dangerous enemy whose legacy of evil follows Charlie and his family for generations.

Encompassing three continents and spanning over sixty years, As the Crow Flies brings to life a magnificent tale of one man's rise from rags to riches set against the backdrop of a changing century.