Summer 1915, and the sound of the guns at the Western Front can be heard across the Channel in England. Throughout Britain, local regiments are recruiting for Kitchener’s Army. And in the village of Stratharden, the Great War has already begun to irrevocably alter the course of five young lives… Alex, below the official recruiting age, plans a way to get to France… ‘I may be too young, but I am going to enlist. And I will get away with it.’
Fifteen year old Charlotte, despite her mother’s opposition, begins work at the local hospital… ‘I’m not trying to look respectable, I’m trying to be useful. I intend to volunteer for nursing in France.’
John Malcolm, impatiently awaiting his eighteenth birthday… ‘It’s up to us now. I can’t wait to get to the Front and be with my friends. I hope it’s not all over before I get there.’ His twin sister Maggie, for whom fearful possibilities are about to open up… ‘There are opportunities for women now, and I mean to take them. I am set to determine my own course in life.’ And Francis, who sees only tragedy ahead… ‘I am strangely unafraid of death… what frightens me more is the death of spirit, that I have so quickly become accustomed to the sights and sounds of war. ..’
An epic novel from award-winning author Theresa Breslin. Read it -and remember…