Tag Archives: historical fiction

#BookReview ‘The Butcher Bird’ by SD Sykes @SD_Sykes #historical #mystery

3 Replies

When a baby is found dead in a spiky blackthorn bush, Oswald de Lacy, the youthful and reluctant Lord Somershill, must counter the myth and suspicion repeated by locals who blame a huge violent bird. Second in the Oswald de Lacy series by SD Sykes, The Butcher Bird starts fast and doesn’t stop.SD Sykes

Kent 1351. It is a year since England was decimated by the plague. At Somershill Manor in Kent, as around the country, workers are demanding higher pay. Oswald, unable to pay them more because he can’t break the decree of the king, fears the crops will likely fail and the estate’s income will fall further. Houses on his estate are abandoned, crops unsown. Still struggling to behave as he feels a Lord of the Manor must, Oswald’s only way to challenge the untruths circulating about the baby’s fate means he must find the real murderer. Some witnesses have left, some mistake imagination for fact, while others lie.
Unswerving in his dismissal of the supernatural, Oswald believes the child must have been killed by a person. He has to summon his courage and challenge superstition, greed, lies, evil and must grow up quickly. With a hypochondriac and manipulative mother and Clemence, his pregnant, challenging widowed sister who often veers into dislike, Oswald is nineteen and inexperienced. Though hardly ever alone, he has no-one in his corner. The fact that he is a teenager bearing so much responsibility, and power over others, is what makes this series different.
Oswald follows the trail to London where he shows both bravery and naivety. There are touches of humour that made me chuckle, particularly the changed behaviour of his mother’s lapdog, Hector. A meeting there which seems a side story from the main murder proves to be a turning point in Oswald’s journey, in more ways than one.
This is an original medieval series with a wonderful mix of spiky characters and clever plot ideas. Definitely not a substitute CJ Sansom, this series stands on its own merits. But don’t jump

Here are my reviews of other books in this series:-
PLAGUE LAND #1 OSWALDDELACY
CITY OF MASKS #3 OSWALDDELACY
THE BONE FIRE #4 OSWALDDELACY
THE GOOD DEATH #5OSWALDDELACY

If you like this, try:-
‘The Last Hours’ by Minette Walters #1BLACKDEATH
‘The Turn of Midnight’ by Minette Walters #2BLACKDEATH
‘Wakenhyrst’ by Michelle Paver

And if you’d like to share a link:
#BookReview THE BUTCHER BIRD by SD Sykes @SD_Sykes https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5ty via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Lily’ by Rose Tremain #historical #foundling #orphan

4 Replies

The sub-title of Lily by Rose Tremain is ‘A Tale of Revenge’ and on the first page we learn that sixteen-year-old Lily Mortimer is a murderer and expects to die soon. It is a compelling beginning. Rose Tremain This is the story of Lily’s life from when as a baby she was found abandoned in a sack being attacked by wolves. Found by a police officer she is taken to London’s Foundling Hospital from where she is placed with a foster family at Rookery Farm in Suffolk. A beautiful telling of a difficult childhood, softened by Tremain’s exquisite writing, Lily shows Victorian London where charitable works sometimes work for the orphaned child and sometimes against. It explores the nature of happiness in a rural life, often hard, but surrounded by love. At the age of six, Lily is returned to London and forbidden contact with her foster parents, Nellie and Perkin Buck, who were paid for their care of her and, after delivering her, collect a new foster baby. Lily is courageous, pragmatic, rebellious and, throughout the harsh years that follow, is sustained by the memory of Nellie’s love. And so starts the cycle of Lily’s life, of hope followed by despair.
Lily’s friendship with fellow orphan Bridget is very touching. It reminded by of Jane Eyre’s friendship with Helen Burns at Lowood, a story that has stayed with me ever since first reading the novel as a teenager.
The almost-adult Lily, dreaming of her death, wonders, ‘Whyever did I struggle so long and so hard to make my way in a place which was bent on my destruction ever since I came into it? Why did I not surrender to death when I was a child, for children’s pictures of death are fantastical and full of a strange beauty?’ The story changes pace when Lily realises she cannot put the past behind her, she must face what she did and why.
The timeline flits back and forth a bit between Lily as a child, in Suffolk and at the Hospital where she is trained for menial employment, and as an adult when she works at the gloriously named and imagined Belle Prettywood’s Wig Emporium which makes wigs for opera and stage productions. It is in the older voice that we learn more about the murder she committed. This is not a murder mystery or a whodunnit, it’s not even a who-was-it-done-to. It’s about a girl who survives an abusive, neglectful childhood by giving and receiving love, kindness and compassion, who learns how to survive alone in the world. Yes, Lily is vulnerable. She longs to love and be loved, but she’s also resilient, despite everything.
Compelling, difficult to put down. Beautifully written.

Read my reviews of these other novels by Rose Tremain:-
ABSOLUTELY & FOREVER
ISLANDS OF MERCY
THE GUSTAV SONATA
THE HOUSEKEEPER

If you like this, try:-
‘The Rose Garden’ by Tracy Rees
‘The Walworth Beauty’ by Michèle Roberts
‘The Quick’ by Lauren Owen

And if you’d like to share this post:
#BookReview LILY by Rose Tremain https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5t5 via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘They Came Like Swallows’ by William Maxwell #historical #classic

5 Replies

Bunny Morison is eight years old and his mother Elizabeth is the centre of his life. Published in 1937, They Came Like Swallows is the second novel by William Maxwell. An autobiographical novella based on the 1918 flu epidemic seen through the eyes of Bunny, Robert and their father James, it’s a sensitive portrayal of the depths of family love not always outwardly expressed. William Maxwell This is a quiet character-led story about love, anxiety and grief, beautifully-written. I most enjoyed Bunny’s viewpoint, the simplicity and power of the love of a small child who sees things he doesn’t understand while sensing a significance. Thirteen-year-old Robert, first seen through Bunny’s eyes, seems a bully but is revealed in his own section as a boy approaching adulthood, protective of his pregnant mother and desperate to please his emotionally-absent father. And finally, James’s section shows the reasons for this distance. Each character is teetering on the edge of change, immersed in his own fears and hopes.
As the story unfolds we are introduced to the Morison’s wider family. Bunny dwells on his aunt Irene, Elizabeth’s sister. ‘… their hands felt entirely different and looked entirely different. From Irene’s hands he drew excitement, and from his mother’s the fact that she loved him. Irene and his mother were as different as the two faces of a coin. And yet they never seemed conscious of the difference.’ When their mother must go away to have her baby, Bunny and Robert go to stay with Aunt Clara, Uncle Wilfred and their Grandmother Morison. Robert, rubbing up against the house rules and being told he can’t do the things he wants to do, finds a dictionary hidden beneath the living room table. ‘Finding the wrong kinds of words in the dictionary was not a crime. They couldn’t put him in jail for it, but it was a thing he would not want to be caught doing, especially by Aunt Clara. It was like telling lies or listening to people who didn’t know he was there.’
A classic.
The title is from a Yeats poem:-
They came like swallows and like swallows went,
And yet a woman’s powerful character
Could keep a swallow to its first intent;
And half a dozen in formation there,
That seemed to whirl upon a compass-point,
Found certainty upon the dreaming air…
From ‘Coole Park, 1929’ by WB Yeats

Try my reviews of these other novels by William Maxwell:-
BRIGHT CENTER OF HEAVEN
THE FOLDED LEAF
TIME WILL DARKEN IT

And read the first paragraphs of TIME WILL DARKEN IT and THE CHATEAU.

If you like this, try:-
‘Anything is Possible’ by Elizabeth Strout
‘A Town Called Solace’ by Mary Lawson
‘The Pull of the Stars’ by Emma Donoghue

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THEY CAME LIKE SWALLOWS by William Maxwell https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5sD via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Women of Troy’ by Pat Barker #historical #myths

10 Replies

The Women of Troy is the second of the Trojan War novels by Pat Barker, telling the post-war story of Trojan woman Briseis, a trophy of war owned by Achilles. I loved the first, The Silence of the Girls, but wanted to hear the stories of more of the women. That’s what we get in this second book. Pat BarkerBriseis, now pregnant with Achilles’ child, is again narrator along with a new male voice, that of Pyrrhus, eldest son of Achilles and Briseis’ stepson. Now Achilles is dead Briseis belongs to Alcimus, charged by Achilles before his death with caring for his unborn child.
The story starts with Pyrrhus inside the wooden horse, constructed by the Greeks, to trick the Trojans. ‘Inside the horse’s gut: heat, darkness, sweat, fear. They’re crammed in, packed as tight as olives in a jar.’ It is Pyrrhus who kills Priam, king of the Trojans, and that murder echoes throughout The Women of Troy. As storms rage – punishment of the victorious Greeks by the Gods for their impious behaviour – the army and its captives are now trapped on the beach waiting for a chance to sail home. This enclosure at close quarters raises emotions, tensions, jealousies and pride. As Alcimus arranges games – chariot racing, archery, spear throwing, wrestling – Briseis acts as a mother-figure for the other women, all now slaves.
Barker explores the after-effects of war on the Trojan women during these empty days – Hecuba, widow of Priam, and Cassandra, her daughter; Andromache, wife of Hector now concubine to Pyrrhus – high-born Trojan women now slaves in the households of their Greek victors, as concubines, whores, cooks and housemaids.
The story is about survival on the edge of despair when women are secondary creatures deemed without opinions or rights, exploring how women individually and collectively find ways to live. There is bravery, despair, foolishness, obsession and madness. When the actions of Pyrrhus are questioned, Briseis must remember the events of one night when Achilles was alive. ‘Both of us [Briseis and Cassandra, another witness] were women – and a woman’s testimony is not considered equal to a man’s. In a court of law, if a man and woman disagree it’s almost invariably his version of events that’s accepted. And that’s in a courtroom – how much more so in this camp where all the women were Trojan slaves and the only real law was force.’
But this is also the story of Pyrrhus, a young man who struggles to match the reputation of a father he never felt close to, a father lauded as a God. These were brutal times when small mistakes were punished by death and Pyrrhus, who has few friends, takes risks and makes bad decisions.
This book works as a standalone story as well as companion to The Silence of the Girls. Both are magnificent examples of storytelling by an author at the peak of her writing. Faithful to the myths, Barker is an inventive writer who adds her own interpretations and twists.
Excellent, I whizzed through this in no time. Will there be a third novel? I hope so.

Read my reviews of other Pat Barker novels:-
THE SILENCE OF THE GIRLS #1WOMENOFTROY
THE VOYAGE HOME #3WOMENOFTROY
LIFE CLASS #1LIFECLASS
TOBY’S ROOM #2LIFECLASS
NOONDAY #3LIFECLASS
DOUBLE VISION
ANOTHER WORLD
BLOW YOUR HOUSE DOWN
UNION STREET

If you like this, try:-
‘These Dividing Walls’ by Fran Cooper
‘A Thousand Acres’ by Jane Smiley
‘Vinegar Girl’ by Anne Tyler

And if you’d like to share this post, try:
#BookReview THE WOMEN OF TROY by Pat Barker https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5sm via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Gabriel Hounds’ by Mary Stewart #mystery #suspense

8 Replies

A rollicking, sensuous tale set at a rundown Lebanese palace involving two cousins, an eccentric great-aunt, various chases and subterfuge, The Gabriel Hounds by Mary Stewart is a classic 20th century suspense romance. The hounds of the title are a legend saying that when the dogs run howling around the palace of Dar Ibrahim in the gloriously-named Adonis Valley, death is sure to follow. Mary Stewart Christy Mansel leaves her guided tour of Syria and Lebanon to visit the palace of her Great-Aunt Harriet. When she arrives at the beguiling, almost Gothic building, she finds a staff who are incommunicative and protective of their boss who prefers her solitude and will not receive visitors until dark. Waiting to hear if her relative will see her, Christy sets out to explore the passages, gardens, walls and secret places, trying to ignore the glares of the servants and avoid the saluki hounds she has been warned are guard dogs and aggressive to strangers.
The descriptions of Lebanon make the story come alive as do the stories of legends researched by the great-aunt’s assistant, John Lethman. Published in 1967, the story develops slowly compared with current publishing tastes but the settings are luscious and the pace picks up in the second half when the vague suspicions of Christy and her cousin Charles that all at Dar Ibrahim is not as it seems begin to feel real.
This is Beirut and the Lebanon pre-Civil War, pre-the kidnappings of John McCarthy and Brian Keenan, pre-Isis. In creating the character of Great-Aunt Harriet and Dar Ibrahim, Stewart acknowledges her debt to the real life of Lady Hester Stanhope, 19th century traveller and adventurer. ‘She finally seems to have believed in her own mystical destiny as Queen of the East who would one day ride crowned into Jerusalem at the side of the new Messiah.’
I read Mary Stewart as a teenager and remember my delight at the romantic, other-worldly stories in destinations so far from my own life. The Gabriel Hounds is definitely worth re-visiting.

Click the title to read my reviews of other Mary Stewart novels:-
MY BROTHER MICHAEL
THE IVY TREE
THIS ROUGH MAGIC
THORNYHOLD
TOUCH NOT THE CAT …and try the #FirstPara of TOUCH NOT THE CAT

If you like this, try these:-
‘The Seventh Miss Hatfield’ by Anna Caltabiano
‘The Forgotten Sister’ by Nicola Cornick
‘The Silent Companions’ by Laura Purcell

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE GABRIEL HOUNDS by Mary Stewart https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5s3 via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Lamentation’ by CJ Sansom #Tudor #detective

7 Replies

The Matthew Shardlake series by CJ Sansom is now my joint favourite series, along with Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet Chronicles. The two series could not be different but they have one key thing in common: both are densely textured with social history that enlivens the story of such well-drawn characters. CJ SansomLamentation is sixth in the Shardlake series, set at a critical time for the politics of England’s religion and for its ailing ruler, Henry VIII. The king is slowly dying. Surrounded by loyal courtiers who disguise the true reality of his incapacity from the public, a power battle is underway for the influence of the king’s heir, his eight-year-old son Edward. As always at this time, we see Protestant versus Catholic set against the background of recovery from war the previous year with France when the Mary Rose was sunk in battle at Portsmouth. Heretics are being burned, an amnesty of banned books is announced and the haters of reformers such as Queen Catherine Parr attempt to smear her reputation. When Shardlake is called to Whitehall Palace to meet the Queen’s uncle, Lord Parr, he can never have expected the mess the Queen has got herself into. She has written a religious pamphlet ‘Lamentation of a Sinner’ which, if it falls into the wrong hands might see her burnt at the stake. She has kept it secret, even from her quixotic husband who may burn her if she tells him or burn her if she keeps it hidden from him. She hesitates, thinking it safely locked in a chest. But the document has vanished. The Queen asks Shardlake to retrieve it and save her honour, and her life.
Shardlake’s trail takes him back and forth across London from royal palaces to printers in the backstreets and meeting houses for radicals. Unwilling to draw his assistant Jack Barack into danger, he enlists the help of his young pupil Nicolas Overton. And all the time, Shardlake can’t shake the feeling he is being watched. As well as seeking the ‘Lamentation’, Shardlake has other difficulties. An ongoing case representing Isabel Slanning in a probate battle with her brother is turning toxic, Matthew’s relationship with Doctor Guy Malton is awkward as religious differences – Guy is a Catholic, Matthew is no longer sure what he believes in – widen, and his new steward does his job but is not likeable. And all the time he is working for the Queen, Shardlake entertains wistful romantic thoughts.
There are fascinating glimpses of characters we know from history who are key in the post-Henry VIII world. Prince Edward. The Princesses Mary and Elizabeth. Lord Cecil. Which makes the next book in the series, Tombland, particularly enticing.
The stakes are the highest yet. Magnificent.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

And here are my reviews of other novels by CJ Sansom:-
DOMINION
DISSOLUTION #1SHARDLAKE
DARK FIRE #2SHARDLAKE
SOVEREIGN #3SHARDLAKE
REVELATION #4SHARDLAKE
HEARTSTONE #5SHARDLAKE

If you like this, try:-
‘Blackberry and Wild Rose’ by Sonia Velton
‘The Last Hours’ by Minette Walters
‘The Wonder’ by Emma Donoghue

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview LAMENTATION by CJ Sansom #Tudor #detective https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5qW via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Last Daughter’ by Nicola Cornick @NicolaCornick #historical

5 Replies

A modern-day disappearance is combined with myths and a famous historical mystery, knit together in The Last Daughter by Nicola Cornick. Nicola CornickThis is a time-slip story involving true characters in history, a magical stone – the Lovell Lodestar – and the legend of The Mistletoe Bride. The latter is story of sorrow and grief attributed to many English mansions and stately homes in which a bridegroom and his bride, tired of dancing at their wedding, play hide and seek. She disappears and is never found until a skeleton is discovered many years later. It is eleven years since Caitlin Warren disappeared, presumed dead. Her twin sister Serena still struggles to move on from her loss, a feeling magnified by the lack of evidence and Serena’s worry that the cognitive amnesia she has suffered since that night may obscure the truth. When a skeleton is discovered during an archaeological dig at Minster Lovell, the country house where the sisters’ grandparents lived and where Caitlin disappeared, the memories come flooding back. Told in two timelines – Serena, present day; and Anne FitzHugh in the 15th century. Anne’s mother is from the powerful Neville family, a major power during the Wars of the Roses. Five-year old Anne is to be betrothed to eight-year-old Francis Lovell, best friend of Richard of Gloucester, younger brother to the Yorkist King Edward IV. History combines with myth when Anne is told the ghostly story of The Mistletoe Bride who disappears into a different place, a different time.
Serena returns to Minster Lovell Hall in Oxfordshire in an attempt to confront her hidden memories and to be interviewed by the police. There she encounters old friends and visits her grandfather Dick, now suffering from dementia. How can Serena in the 21st century be connected to Anne FitzHugh and what bearing could this have on Caitlin’s disappearance?
A complex story full of so many twists, mysteries and myths that I occasionally floundered. When I surrendered to the flow of the story and stopped worrying about a few gaps and implausible connections, the pages flew by. I finished it wondering if the story would be stronger with slightly less myth and more of Anne and Francis.

Read my review of these other novels by Nicola Cornick:-
THE FORGOTTEN SISTER
THE FOURTH QUEEN
THE OTHER GWYN GIRL
THE SECRETS OF THE ROSE
THE WINTER GARDEN

If you like this, try:-
‘The Dream Weavers’ by Barbara Erskine’
‘The Almanack’ by Martine Bailey
‘The Cursed Wife’ by Pamela Hartshorne

And if you’d like to share a link:
#BookReview THE LAST DAUGHTER by Nicola Cornick @NicolaCornick https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5ri via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Garden of Angels’ by David Hewson #WW2 #thriller

6 Replies

David Hewson is a new author for me. The Garden of Angels is a combination of historical novel and World War Two thriller, written in a patient, multi-layered style which explores a moment in history through the lives of a small number of people. Hewson makes wartime Venice come alive in all its stench, beauty, cruelty, fear and starvation. David HewsonIt is 1943 and the locals are watching the news, following the Allies’ progress towards Rome, wondering how much longer they must wait to be free once more. Meanwhile the Germans search amongst the locals for partisans, traitors, communists. But most of all they search for Jews. A teenage boy, alone after his parents are killed in a bombing raid, must continue the business of the family firm, jacquard weavers of the most beautiful velvet. He must complete the commission his father won just before he died. He stays within the four walls of his home, whilst on the streets outside people are being killed. Until one day Paulo sees something that makes him determined to do something rather than stand by.
The story hinges on the modern-day relationship between a boy and his grandfather, encapsulated from page one as Nonno Paulo reads a bedtime story to five-year-old Nico. He reads from a true story from a history book and they discuss the nature of truth, the truth of death. Ten years later, in 1999 when Nonno Paulo is dying, he gives to Nico a series of letters telling the truth of his life in Venice in 1943 during the German occupation. No one knows Paulo’s real story.
In 1943, Venice is a closed city, tight-knit, full of secret spaces and places the Germans don’t know. It is both a place for hiding and a place for living under the eye of the Nazis and Black Brigades. Paolo shelters two partisans who are on the run. Brother and sister Vanni and Mika Artom are not hunted solely because they have killed Germans, but because they are Jews. Mika, unable to sit quietly by, finds a local resistance group and agrees to take part in a plot to murder a visiting VIP, Salvatore Bruno, a Jew who is betraying other Jews. Vanni, injured and hardly able to move, helps Paolo and his assistant Chiara to weave.
This is a powerful story that hooks you from the beginning and draws you in. I was still thinking about the book days after finishing it. It is not a regular war thriller though it has all the usual conventions. It is more about how we as humans act under extreme circumstances, what we do to survive, where we draw our red lines, when to stand aside and when to step in, how far we will go to win; surprisingly similar dilemmas for the occupiers and the occupied when all are ultimately ordinary people.

If you like this, try:-
‘A Beautiful Spy’ by Rachel Hore
‘The Heat of the Day’ by Elizabeth Bowen
‘Midnight in Europe’ by Alan Furst

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE GARDEN OF ANGELS by David Hewson https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5pi via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Plague Land’ by SD Sykes @SD_Sykes #historical #mystery #plague

7 Replies

I’ve realised that when I start reading the first book in new series, I should have different expectations. It will not be a standalone novel so there will be continuing threads, unanswered questions and seemingly unrelated sub-plots which all come good in later books. In other words, I wear my ‘be patient’ hat. Plague Land by SD Sykes is first in the historical mystery Oswald de Lacy series. Set in 1350 in countryside ravaged by the plague, teenager Oswald reluctantly finds himself called home from the monastery to be lord of the manor. For almost the whole of the book, he is out of control of events. SD Sykes

This is a historical mystery with an uncertain, inexperienced young lord at its centre. Oswald’s mother and sister are rude to him, the locals simply ignore him, his servants show a lack of respect. A neighbouring lord and the local churchman see him as easy to manipulate and when he is new to his role, Oswald agrees with them. He longs to return to the monastery with his mentor, Father Peter, who returned to Somershill Manor with Oswald. Sykes does a good job portraying a young adult trying to occupy a mature man’s role. What drives him on is an incurable determination to find the truth and an endearing bravery which makes him ask awkward questions and takes him to places he probably shouldn’t be.
When one young woman from the village, then another, are killed in mysterious circumstances, Oswald doesn’t so much lose control of the situation as never hold control in the first place. Rumours of dog-headed monsters rip through the community despite Oswald’s attempts to engage the villagers in logical analysis. Superstition, fear and myth abound in a countryside empty of people; understandable following the horror of death, disease and poverty of the plague.
Many people are not how or who they seem and Oswald learns the hard way not to take appearances or counsel for granted. His questioning of everything and everyone inevitably leads to conflict, and conflict is the beating heart of fiction.
I connected more with Oswald as the story progressed and he was less naive, and now anticipate reading the rest of the series.

Here are my reviews of other books in this series:-
THE BUTCHER BIRD #2OSWALDDELACY
CITY OF MASKS #3OSWALDDELACY
THE BONE FIRE #4OSWALDDELACY
THE GOOD DEATH #5OSWALDDELACY

If you like this, try:-
‘The Almanack’ by Martine Bailey #1TABITHAHART
‘Winter Pilgrims’ by Toby Clements #1KINGMAKER
‘Gone are the Leaves’ by Anne Donovan

And if you’d like to share a link:
#BookReview PLAGUE LAND by SD Sykes @SD_Sykes https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5nv via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The War Child’ by Renita D‘Silva @RenitaDSilva #WW2 #historical

7 Replies

Two women, two generations apart. In The War Child, Renita D‘Silva explores the connections between a mother and child, through danger and separation, self-sacrifice, unstoppable events and the pressures of modern life. Renita D‘SilvaD’Silva tells the dual timeline stories of Clara and Indira over many decades, setting the strength and promise of women across four decades against the twentieth century prejudices of chauvinism and racism. In London, 1940, teenager Clara is woken by her mother as their home is bombed. Her mother presses into Clara’s hand a necklace, a St Christopher’s medal, with the promise that it will always protect her. Orphaned, Clara is taken in by her aunt and begins helping at a local hospital treating injured soldiers. When nurses and doctors ignore a wounded Indian soldier because of the colour of his skin, Clara nurses him to health. When the war ends, she decides to fulfil a long-held promise to herself. Inspired by sitting on her father’s knee and listening to his stories of India, Clara takes a job as nurse companion to a delicate boy whose parents are re-locating to India. And there, she falls in love.
In India, 1995, 33-year old Indira is chairing a board meeting when she gets a message to ‘go to the hospital’. Fearing her young son is dying – he is in hospital for a minor surgical procedure – she finds her husband and son both well. The message refers to Indira’s father who has had a heart attack. Indira returns home to her parents, somewhere she hasn’t been much of late as she seeks to avoid their simplistic boring life, resenting their dissatisfaction with her life choices.
Sometimes raw and painful, always emotionally complex with surprising twists that make you gasp, The War Child is another brilliant book by my first-choice author for Indian historical romance. D’Silva is such a visual writer that India is a real place on the page, the colours and scents are both beautiful and challenging, her descriptions as full of contrasts as fresh guava sprinkled with chilli powder.

Read my reviews of these other novels by Renita D’Silva:-
A DAUGHTER’S COURAGE
A MOTHER’S SECRET
BENEATH AN INDIAN SKY
THE GIRL IN THE PAINTING
THE ORPHAN’S GIFT
THE SPICE MAKER’S SECRET
THE SECRET KEEPER

If you like this, try:-
‘The Tea Planter’s Wife’ by Dinah Jefferies
‘Call of the Curlew’ by Elizabeth Brooks
‘The Sapphire Widow’ by Dinah Jefferies

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE WAR CHILD by Renita D‘Silva @RenitaDSilva https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5mW via @SandraDanby