The Summer Before the War: A Novel - Hardcover

Simonson, Helen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385677065 ISBN 13: 9780385677066

Publisher: Bond Street Books, 2016

Synopsis

New York Times - bestselling author Helen Simonson returns with a splendid historical novel full of the same wit, romance and insight into the manners and morals of small-town British life as her beloved Major Pettigrew's Last Stand.

It's the summer of 1914 and life in the sleepy village of Rye, England is about to take an interesting turn. Agatha Kent, a canny force for progress, is expecting an unusual candidate to be the school's Latin teacher: Beatrice Nash, a young woman of good breeding in search of a position after the death of her father. (Never has there been a woman Latin teacher.) Agatha's nephews, meanwhile, have come to spend the summer months, as always, both with dreams of their own: Daniel, the poet, to publish a literary journal in Paris, and Hugh, to graduate from medical studies and marry his surgeon's daughter thus inheriting a lucrative practice. But then Hugh is sent to pick up Beatrice from the train station and life, of course, changes. As with Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, the quintessential English village becomes the stage on which entrenched tradition, class, ignorance, family ties and love play out. Here, these characters and others we come to love and root for become characters we hope and pray for when the shadow of the Great War looms ever closer to home.

About this title

About the Author:

HELEN SIMONSON was born in England and spent her teenage years in a small village in East Sussex. A graduate of the London School of Economics, she has spent the last three decades in the United States and currently lives in Brooklyn. She is married, with two grown sons, and is the author of the New York Times-bestselling debut novel, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand. This is her second novel.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

 

About this edition

• Publisher: Bond Street Books
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0385677065
• ISBN 13: 9780385677066
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 496