FOR José Patterson, literary success has come a little later in life.

The 84-year-old’s children’s book No Buts, Becky! has been chosen as a finalist in two competitions.

It was shortlisted at the People’s Book Prize awards and at the Wishing Shelf Independent Book Awards.

The retired teacher, inspired by her Jewish faith and her own family’s immigration from Poland, said: “I am still truly astonished that this has happened.”

No Buts, Becky! is about 11-year-old Becky Feldman and her family, Russian Jewish immigrants who settle in east London in 1908.

Told from the child’s perspective, the book follows Becky as she struggles to adjust to her new life in England as her father remarries.

The grandmother-of-eight – who moved to Oxford with late husband David in 1957 – had previously written non-fiction educational books for children.

But a talk by a friend inspired her to write again for the first time in almost 20 years in 2012.

She said: “I went to a talk about the plight of Russian immigrants who fled to London in the 1900s.

“They had escaped from the terrible anti-Semitic pogroms. I’ve got a creative mind and it appealed to me.”

The book was published in March 2013 by Troubador Publishing Ltd.

Mrs Patterson said: “Within a week I got a glowing review, and no writer could have wished for a better result.”

She was a finalist in the children’s category at the People’s Book Prize awards and the Wishing Shelf Book Awards.

The Banbury Road resident said of the People’s Book Prize: “That was brilliant. I was very chuffed with that. I wasn’t told how many people voted for me, but I was told I was beaten by a whisper. It was a very close thing.

“I’ve had lots of parents email me and say how much they enjoyed it. The number of non-Jews who have written to me was amazing.”

Mrs Patterson, who specialised in teaching traveller and circus children in Oxfordshire, said her family’s Jewish faith and history inspired her.

“I’m the granddaughter of an immigrant Jewish family,” she said. “My grandparents moved to Blackpool and set up a hotel there.”

In the book, Becky’s father re-marries after the death of his wife with the help of a matchmaker.

She said: “In Jewish law, families had to be continued – if a husband died, his brother married the widow; it’s a tradition of protecting the widow.

  • “I made it so Becky’s father felt he had to marry again because the children were motherless and his mother was ill.”

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