Isa and her young family emigrate from the tiny Orkney island of Raumsey to Alberta, where her parents are already living. An unfortunate young English girl, Sarah, happens to arrive at the same time, destined to marry a friend of her father’s, who is much older than she. The vastness of the prairie environment and…
This book, number 5 in the Raumsey series, not only portrays the horrors of WWII through the eyes of simple, ordinary participants, but sheds a sidelong glance at the morality of a war initiated at some high level, far away from those who are forced to carry it out without understanding why.
Eldredge has hit on something big! He dares to turn his back on the common modern Christian perspective on society (esp. masculine roles) and explore the deep, real motives and needs of men. His analysis is rather one-sided (e.g. every man carries a wound given by his father P.60) and so is his remedy: accept…
Flame in the Night by Heather Munn is a captivating drama about the resistance movement in occupied France during WWII. Teenage scouts conceal Jewish children from the Gestapo in remote farms, attics, treetops and caves. Meanwhile, all around them everyday life continues as usual: cultivating vegetables, going to school, shovelling snow, attending church. Plot An…
Scandalous rumours and immoral men do their best to ruin May Rose Long’s life. But she strives to remain honest and chaste. With neither home nor money, she even adopts the forlorn wild teenager, Wanda, before realising she is her fugitive husband’s daughter. The book is well written and paints a realistic picture of the social…
It’s a bit strange for a Jerseyman to watch a film about WWII Guernsey in Switzerland. As can be imagined, the audience was small. I was pleased to discover a war film with a difference: no explicit brutality and no sex.
This charmingly innocent book traces the relationship between orphaned Judy Abbott, who feels she has neither worth nor right to exist but is clever and has a gift for writing, and her mysterious benefactor known only as Daddy-Long-Legs, since he insists on remaining anonymous.
“Mama sagt, dass selbst die Vögel nicht mehr singen” von Myriam Rawick Für den Leser sind es eher Kleinigkeiten, die der sechsjährigen Myriam aus Aleppo wichtig sind: schöne Kleider, Düfte aus der Bäckerei, Spiele mit ihren Schulkameraden. Ob sie wie sie Christen sind oder Muslime ist ihr egal. Und die Begriffe der Erwachsenen – Demonstration,…
I usually look for historical fiction when I visit a new place. But during a recent sailing trip among the spectacular Swedish skerries, the only novel I found with a local setting in the bookshop of the picturesque island of Sandhamn was a contemporary murder mystery. It took me only a few days to devour…
This is a very well-crafted story of an extended family of Huguenots caught up in the frenzied and irrational persecution under King Louis XIV after he repealed the Edict of Nantes in 1685. It is based on a true incident, in which smuggled documents from sympathisers in Holland are salvaged from a shipwreck near Rochefort on…
A frolicking and rather preposterous classic tale of romance, gallantry, bravery and vengeance set in 17th century France (and England). D’Artagnan and his three friends Aramis, Athos and Porthos are never shy of a duel or some undercover mission and, although their own morals are questionable, they always fight for justice and always emerge (almost)…
This moving book can be read as a series of interlocking romances, but it’s much more than that. Life on the Orkney island of Raumsey is tough after the Great War and the widow Isa, who has returned from Canada with her daughter Annie, is poor and hardly able to maintain the family croft without a…