The Girl on the Beach
published by Allison and Busby
Hardback February 2012 ISBN: 9780 7490 1106 2
Paperback August 2012 ISBN 9780 7490 1218 2
also available as an ebook.
Julie Monday, so called because she had been left on the doorstep of the Foundling Hospital on a Monday in July of 1918, is taken with her classmates on an outing to the seaside when she is eight. She wanders off alone and meets eleven year-old Harry Walker. They enjoy a few hours chatting together but then she has to go back to the orphanage and her punishment for wandering off: being locked in a cupboard.
Ten years later they meet again and fall in love. Their courtship is not straightforward, but they overcome the obstacles and marry in 1938 and have a baby boy. The second world war breaks out and Harry joins the Air Force, leaving Julie to look after her baby and cope with the rationing and the blitz without him.
Her one aim is to keep her son safe and provide everything he needs and to this end she becomes involved with a friend, Rosie, who brings her black market supplies. Paying for them becomes a problem and Rosie offers to baby sit for her while she goes off to raise the money by pawning her wedding ring.
Caught out in an air raid on her way home, she is directed to a shelter. Her time in the cupboard in her childhood has left her severely claustrophobic and she is fighting panic. The shelter receives a direct hit. Pulled out alive but injured, she cannot remember how she got there. She does not know who she is and has lost her bag containing her identification. Nor can she understand why no one has come looking for her. At the hospital to which she is taken, she is given the new name. She must make a new life for herself as Eve Seaton, but she is disturbed by flashes of memory, little things that confuse her more than enlighten her and she wonders what dreadful secret her loss of memory is hiding.
Just when she is beginning to think it will never return, another traumatic experience brings it flooding back and her first thought is for her baby. She has left him with Rosie and must get back to him. It is only when she finds her house has been destroyed by a bomb, that the truth really dawns on her. Four years have passed, her child is dead and the woman who is buried in her grave is her friend, Rosie.
What to do? Who to tell? Should she try and find Harry? He must have made a new life for himself. Had she any right to push herself back into his life? But they had loved each other once. Did they still? Or should she be content with the life she has. But that life is a lie. There is no such person as Eve Seaton.
Julie Bonello wrote:
A compelling wartime saga of unbreakable bonds, divided loyalties and dangerous secrets, The Girl on The Beach is a fantastic read that will keep readers on the edge of their seats and engrossed from start to finish!
To read the whole review, click here
Review by Historical Novel Society
Nichols is a consummate storyteller and cleverly weaves the progress of the war into the lives of her characters. She brings the past alive and deals with the tragic consequences of war. Love, loss, rationing, the black market, the struggle of the ordinary people and the armed forces are all touched upon in this delightfully compelling story. The reader is left wondering until the very end if it will be possible for Julie and Harry to find happiness.
To read the whole review click here
Also Charnwood Large Print published by F A Thorpe
May 2012
ISBN 978 1 4448 1518 4
Also published by Soundings
Audio Books on CD ISBN 978 1 4079 3370 2
The reader is Penelope Freeman
Paperback in German published by Weldbild 2014
ISBN: (78 3 863 65773 4
The title means Voices of Remembrance.
If you would like to download the first chapter please click on the link below:
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| The Girl on the Beach sample.pdf | 197.34 KB |