Written for readers who have finished Book 1.
Edie Fletcher is ten years old when the war sends her away — a London girl put on a train with a label round her neck and evacuated to a Devon farm she has never seen. Sharp, funny, and fiercely homesick, she lives the war at a child's height: her city on the wireless, her mother's letters in her pocket, and the front-door key to home worn smooth in her fist. Her story is the slow, reluctant discovery that a place you were sent to can become a place you belong — without the home you came from ever mattering less.
Bill Fletcher is Edie's father — an East-End dockman who signs on with the merchant navy and sails the…
Hettie is the Pengelly farm's most disagreeable hen — big, rusty, bad-tempered, and nobody's friend, and the…
Joan Pengelly is Tom's older sister, on the edge of grown-up when Edie arrives — a careful politeness that…
Mr Pengelly is the farmer who takes Edie in — large, undemonstrative, and kinder than a wary London girl…
Mrs Hooper is Vera's neighbour and friend in Bethnal Green — the Fletchers' London anchor, all sharp opinions…
Mrs Pengelly is Edie's billet host — the gruff, fair, unsentimental Devon farm wife who is the hardest person…