An international bestseller with over one million readers.
With war threatening to spread from Europe to England, the sleepy
village of Crowmarsh Priors settles into a new sort of normal: Evacuees
from London are billeted in local homes. Nightly air raids become grimly
mundane. The tightening vice of rationing curtails every comfort. Men
leave to fight and die. And five women forge an unlikely bond of
friendship that will change their lives forever.
Alice Osbourne, the stolid daughter of the late vicar, is reeling from
the news that Richard Fairfax broke their engagement to marry Evangeline
Fontaine, an American girl from the Deep South. Evangeline's arrival
causes a stir in the village--but not the chaos that would ensue if they
knew her motives for being there. Scrappy Elsie Pigeon is among the poor
of London who see the evacuations as a chance to escape a life of
destitution. Another new arrival is Tanni Zayman, a young Jewish girl
who fled the horrors of Europe and now waits with her newborn son,
certain that the rest of her family is safe and bound to show up any
day. And then there's Frances Falconleigh, a madcap, fearless debutante
whose father is determined to keep her in the countryside and out of the
papers.
As the war and its relentless hardships intensify around them, the same
struggles that threaten to rip apart their lives also bring the five
closer together. They draw strength from one another to defeat
formidable enemies--hunger, falling bombs, the looming threat of a Nazi
invasion, and a traitor in their midst--and find remarkable strength
within themselves to help their friends. Theirs is a war-forged loyalty
that will outlast the fiercest battle and endure years and distance.
When four of the women return to Crowmarsh Priors for a VE Day
celebration fifty years later, television cameras focus on the
heartwarming story of these old women as war brides of a bygone age, but
miss the more newsworthy angle. The women's mission is not to
commemorate or remember--they've returned to settle a score and avenge
one of their own.
Revised edition: This edition of War Brides includes editorial
revisions.
