From an international bestseller, a saga of a widow who shelters with another family to survive during the second world war and finds love and redemption.
1940. Molly Swift, at twenty-seven, has already suffered the tragic loss of her two-year-old daughter Emily, to the flu outbreak of 1935. Now she waits for news of her shopkeeper husband Ted, who volunteered for the British Expeditionary Forces at the outbreak of war.
Molly is intent on running the general store with the help of her retired father, Bill Keen. But after the building is hit during a bombing raid and Bill is severely injured, Molly faces difficult times. Alone in the hospital corridor as Bill is treated, Molly tries to keep positive. But the Blitz is well underway and she is forced to take shelter in the hospital’s basement. It’s here, as the bombs fall around docklands, that Molly meets Andy Miller and his two young children, Evie and Mark. An unlikely friendship begins as Molly offers the homeless group safe lodgings for the following night, and soon their lives are entwined, bringing unexpected joy and heartache for them all.
“Surely one of the best saga writers of her time.” —Rosie Clarke, author of the Harper’s Emporium series
