She Goes to War - Hardcover

Edith Pargeter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747202052 ISBN 13: 9780747202059

Publisher: Heinemann, 1942

Synopsis

From an author well-known as Ellis Peters. It is 1940 and Catherine Saxon is on her way to join the WRENS at its Quarters in Devonport. An impulse decision, it is to have undreamt of consequences. She quickly grows to love the Devon countryside, and so her posting to war-torn Liverpool comes as a shock. She soon acclimatises, and it is there that she meets Spanish Civil War veteran Tom Lyddon, who is to have a profound effect on her life. When Tom is recalled to active service, all Catherine can do is wait - and hope - for her lover's safe return.

About this title

From AudioFile

Readers of the Brother Cadfael series know Pargeter's insights into passion. In this elegiac, semi-autobiographical novel, she again shows this strength. Her narrator is of like quality. To say that Boyd masters Pargeter's sensibility and language is an understatement. She embodies the determination of the young Wren as she lives out WWII, expressing rueful sangfroid or raging protest. The epistilary format might have been unappealing, however suited to audio, but so committed is this presentation that we, ourselves, become the recipients of the letters. Their words of grim events in a grim time echo long after the tape is over. S.B.S. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Publishers Weekly

In an effort to make a decisive contribution to her country during WW II, fashion and gossip columnist Catherine Saxon signs on with the Women's Royal Naval Service (Wrensp. 46 for short). Her frequentwriter is prolific , descriptive and relentlessly chatty letters home to an old friend run the gamut, with Catherine relays everything: her observations about the tricky alliances formed among women from all classes when they are forced to live together in spartan quarters; tales of operating since she's a woman the bulky and temperamental telegraph machines; and her feelings for Tom Lyddon, a stalwart career soldier she meets when she's posted to Liverpool. Theirs is a love affair forged in the grim realities and foreshortened sense of time fostered by the war. When Tom's overseas assignment separates them, Catherine is left to sort out the tumultuous uncertainties of a world at war and the meaning of her involvement in the service. Apart from its sometimes bumpy exposition, this is, in the end, a satisfying read that takes its place ably among the slew of mysteries that Pargeter has written as Ellis Peters.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Heinemann
• Publication date: 1942
• ISBN 10: 0747202052
• ISBN 13: 9780747202059
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1