Author
It's 1950: 15-year old Henry Dodge lives with his mother Maureen and her new husband Bill. Encouraged by his embittered and meddling paternal grandmother, Henry refuses to accept Bill and wishes to keep alive the memory of his father Joey, a decorated Dunkirk hero killed by a deserter during an air raid. After new class-mate Grace and kindly school teacher Mrs Beaumont have persuaded Henry to forgive Paul Jeffries (the deserter's son), Joey appears claiming to have lost his memory and anxious to get his family back. But Grace is right to be suspicious of him, and the stories told by Henry's mother support her...
Novel
The war in Europe is over, but the one at home has only just begun. The Second World War is ending and throughout Britain, evacuees are returning home to their families - but not the families they remember. Like so many other women, Peggy’s life has been transformed by the war. Living and working with good friends, she is happier than she has been for years. Yet Peggy’s life is not the only one changed by the war. Her daughter, Rusty, has just returned from the U.S., where she has been living as an evacuee for the last five years. After so long abroad, her home in England has become unrecognizable. Just as Peggy begins to restore normal family bonds, her husband returns from the war, damaged and desperate to make everything as it was before. Adapted from the novel by Michelle Magorian, author of Goodnight, Mister Tom, Back Home is the story of a family who struggle to make sense of their new lives in a world irrevocably altered by the far-reaching effects of war.
Novel
We're in an English village shortly before Dunkirk. "Mr. Tom" Oakley still broods over the death of his wife and small son while he was away in the navy during WWI, and grief has made him a surly hermit. Now children evacuated from London are overwhelming volunteers to house them. Practically under protest, Mr. Tom takes in a painfully quiet 10-year-old, who gradually reveals big problems.
