Currently reading
PICKING UP THE PIECES IN POST-WORLD WAR I EUROPE
For close to 15 years, I have read at least 30 novels by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, all of which have transported me to a variety of interesting places and times, as well as introducing me to many colorful, endearing, and intriguing people.
"PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES: War at Home, 1919" is the final novel in the War at Home Series, which has been a delight to read. It begins in December 1918, a few weeks after the Armistice. Captain Sir Edward Hunter, the patriarch of the Hunter family, has survived the hazards of war and is anxious for a reconciliation with his wife, Beattie, whose heart had been captured by an old love from her youth who had died from wounds he received from combat about a year earlier, leaving her heartbroken and emotionally distant from her husband. But before the reconciliation could take place, Edward is asked to take on an important role at the upcoming Paris Peace Conference. Thus for most of 1919, Edward is mainly in Paris. Beattie manages to make a visit and both she and Edward begin the tentative process of reconciliation. I won't say much more than that.
The Hunter family and Edward's sister Laura (an adventurous woman who had spent the previous couple of years at the Front as an ambulance driver and the proprietress of a rest home and recreation center for soldiers in Flanders not far from the lines) experience various ups and downs in 1919 --- as do several of the servants who had long been in service to the Hunters at The Elms in Northcote. Now that the war is over, readjusting to peacetime in Britain proves to be easier said than done.
What I loved most about reading "PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES" is that I never wanted to stop reading. Everything about it seemed so tangible, so real. I felt that Sir Edward, Beattie, their children, the family dog Nailer -- and the servants Cook, Ada, and Ethel (along with Munt the cantankerous gardener and Frank Hussey, who had bared his heart to Ethel some years ago and remained determined to woo and marry her) were so vividly alive!!! And now that I've finished the War at Home Series, what I have experienced from it, I know, will stay with me always. Give or take 3 or 5 years, and I wouldn't be averse to re-reading all 6 novels thereof.