The Shadows of War

Sussex, 1939. In the quiet village of Hurst Green, the gathering shadow of war forces Lily Harper to give up her dream of becoming an artist and take on a burden she never wanted. At just twenty-two, alone after a sudden tragedy, she must shoulder the running of her family’s struggling farm.

The land is unforgiving, and the men who once worked for her father doubt she can lead them. As rationing bites and the young men march away to fight, the farm becomes a lifeline for the whole village. Lily works until her hands are raw to win their respect, steadied by George, her father’s loyal farmhand, and by an unlikely friendship with Eleanor, a young woman who leaves her historic country house home for the mud of the fields.

Then a German fighter comes down over the Weald, and the war Lily has only heard on the wireless is lying wounded in her own fields. The enemy she was raised to fear has a face, and a name, and a quiet decency that unsettles everything she believed. In a village where a single careless word can ruin a life, some feelings are more dangerous than any bomb.

For beneath the ordinary round of harvest and hearth, Lily is being drawn into a secret that could cost her far more than the farm, and the hardest battle of the war may be the one fought quietly, at home.

The Shadows of War is a sweeping, deeply moving story of loyalty and courage: of two young women from different worlds, a bond that crosses enemy lines, and the ordinary people of Hurst Green who held fast while a nation waited in the dark.