All On A Summer's Day - Hardcover

Gardiner, Judy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0750502908 ISBN 13: 9780750502900

Publisher: Magna Large Print Books, 1992

Synopsis

In this moving and authentic World War II saga which opens in Liverpool, Miranda Whittaker, is drawn to the Ellenberg family, whose daughter Nat befriends her at school. The Ellenbergs are kindly, cultured and Jewish, but her new world falls apart when she inadvertently causes the death of Nat's baby sister Rachel. As Nat and Miranda grow up their paths diverge; Nat becomes a music student in Paris, while Miranda, widowed after a brief marriage, remains haunted by the death of little Rachel. The chance to atone is given when she becomes part of a Red Cross Unit. She moves with them through Europe, then one day they come to a halt outside a strange and silent place guarded by watchtowers and barbed wire. She has reached the place of ultimate darkness...

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

A simple romantic tale, sagging with message, featuring the friendship of two Englishwomen--one from a kind and cultured Jewish family, the other the product of a middling poor, dippy, but good- hearted mother and a permanently absent (maybe dead, maybe not) dad. During WW II, anti-Semitism will take its toll. Miranda Whittaker, daughter of flitty Flo--who's apt to change her accounts of the death of Miranda's father to the increasingly exotic--meets Natalie Ellenberg for the first time in their Liverpool school, where the two become fast chums. But it's in 1936 that Miranda also first catches the stench of anti-Semitism when Flo's boyfriend turns out to be an English Nazi. Meanwhile, Miranda loves Natalie's family and adores baby Rachel. Then, however, the baby is tragically killed in a street row, and Miranda is haunted for years by the fear that she's been responsible. War rumbles, and Natalie, a gifted pianist, goes to Paris to study. There, she not only meets the love of her life but, later, she will suffer and come very near death in a camp. At home in England, Miranda-- married to charming, older, and (conveniently) dying Emry--joins the Red Cross, travels to Germany as the war ends, and finds.... At the close, there's a reunion at Miranda's 60th--while a band of Nazi Neanderthals whoop it up in the park across the street. So evil goes on. A well-intentioned first novel built around a worthwhile message--but the characters are as predictable as the plot. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

This lightweight but appealing romance, English writer Gardiner's debut, opens in 1936 in England, when its two heroines, Miranda Whittaker and Natalie Ellenberg, are 14; at its conclusion they are 60. Gardiner traces the vicissitudes of their friendship as it is affected by the events of the turbulent era in which they mature. Natalie, Jewish and a gifted pianist, goes to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger. She stays too long, is picked up by the Gestapo and sent to Saint-Denis, Drancy and finally Auschwitz. Miranda, widowed soon after her marriage, becomes a Red Cross volunteer. Trained as a medic, she is sent to Europe with a team eventually assigned to Auschwitz, where she finds her old friend near death, saves her life and gets her back to England. Gardiner's style is better suited to describing Natalie's love affair in a Paris attic than the horrors of Auschwitz. She does a creditable job, however, of conveying British class differences--especially through revealing dialogue between Miranda and her not-quite-respectable mother.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Magna Large Print Books
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0750502908
• ISBN 13: 9780750502900
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 491