It is the story of a evacuee child (12 year old girl) from London who lands with a horrible family and eventually makes a friend of a young (23 yr.

It is often heartbreaking, but it highlights the importance of small acts of love, of faith, of trying to do the right thing, and shows how these can transcend and outweigh oppression and hate. Philip, a pacifist and would-be artist has left university after suffering a breakdown, and has isolated himself in an abandoned lighthouse in the Fens where he spends his days painting and trying to sort out his life. She forms a very lovely and quiet friendship with Peter, a young man in his 20s who is trying to make sense of his own feelings about who he is, who he loves, and his objections to the war. The lighthouse setting was inspired by the one that Sir Peter Scott lived in for a while and where he set up his first bird sanctuary.I don’t think sailing skills one learned at age twelve—which have gone unpractised for a decade or more—could be applied with the readiness Philip demonstrates. Their paths cross when Freda, clearly under nourished, turns up at his door seeking help with an injured goose. Most will not hold a perfect hand in life’s poker game, but serendipitous happenings can propel us forward into our futures if we’re willing to give each other a chance. I didn't see how the message of that daily, thoughtful, caring/caregiving love was reflected in her life. Philip is a sensitive human being, a conscientious objector who left Oxford after having a nervous breakdown and now works for a local farmer.

My heart finds indescribable serenity in nature and felt completely at home in the descriptions in this book. Freda is a 12/13yo girl who, after having been evacuated from London, is housed with a family in the harsh landscape of the fens. A World War II novel family rooted in the countryside of East Anglia around Kings, Lynn and Wisbech, this story tales of a young girl, evacuated from wartime London to the countryside.After a railroad trip, she is taken up in the flatlands of Britain by a family paid by the government to shelter her.

During WWII in England, Freda became an evacuee and billets in Lincolnshire where bombs may potentially fall. The relationship between Philip and Freda feels slight and underdeveloped, given its significance for both their later lives. Set in England at the start of WWII, this is the story of a special friendship between a young girl from the East End of London and a young conscientious objector. Beautifully-written, and highly evocative of the remote Lincolnshire landscape, the Second World War and the two people whose loneliness brings them together for a life-changing time… Altogether a fine period novel, full of quiet drama and sorrow at loss, cruelty and mortality.To make sense of her life, she sorts through the ephemera that are “tangible evidence of what really happened.

In this novel Philip is an isolate who has lost his faith in God, has had a nervous breakdown and is a conscientious objector. Ordinary in the way it so well captures everyday lives and emotions that we can recognize but that still have depth and power. I had to look up almost all of the clothes -- didn't know what they were for sure and in a long list couldn't let them all just drift by! She has previously published in the UK three acclaimed novels and numerous collections of poetry, and was commissioned to create London's largest public art poem at Waterloo. Philip is an artist and a conscientious objector living in a remote lighthouse on the shores of the Wash.

The man is a pacifist in WWII, working in the fields, living in an old lighthouse, painting in his spare time, and thinking constant circular thoughts about the purpose of his life and if he is right to be here, if pacifism is right, if there is a God, etc. Twelve years old Freda is an evacuee from London sent away for fear of what might be coming soon to the capital. This is a sad tale set in the middle of the 20th Century that’s distanced now so as to be a historical novel. I found it to be meditative and atmospheric - I could feel the cold chill of the Wash/Fens seaside and the uninsulated lighthouse and then be warmed when Freda and Phillip have a cup of tea and heat their wartime too thin bodies.