About this item
In the tradition of Jennifer Robson and Hazel Gaynor, this unforgettable debut novel is a sweeping tale of forbidden love, profound loss, and the startling truth of the broken families left behind in the wake of World War I.1921. Survivors of the Great War are desperately trying to piece together the fragments of their broken lives. While many have been reunited with their loved ones, Edie's husband Francis has not come home. Francis is presumed to have been killed in action, but Edie believes he might still be alive.Harry, Francis's brother, was there the day Francis was wounded. He was certain it was a fatal wound - that he saw his brother die - but as time passes, Harry begins questioning his memory of what happened. Could Francis, like many soldiers, merely be lost and confused somewhere? Hired by grieving families, Harry returns to the Western Front to photograph gravesites. As he travels through battle-scarred France and Belgium gathering news for British wives and mothers, he searches for evidence of Francis.When Edie receives a mysterious photograph of Francis, she is more convinced than ever he might still be alive. And so, she embarks on a journey in the hope of finding some trace of her husband. Is he truly gone? And if he isn't, then why hasn't he come home? As Harry and Edie's paths converge, they get closer to the truth about Francis and, as they do, are faced with the life-changing impact of the answers they discover. Artful and incredibly moving, The Poppy Wife tells the unforgettable story of the soldiers lost amid the chaos and ruins, and those who were desperate to find them.
About the Author
My four great-grandfathers all served on the Western Front and I grew up in a house full of polished-up shell cases and silk postcards. In my childhood, the First World War seemed to be the answer to so many questions about our family history. By the time I was a teenager, I was dragging my poor long-suffering parents around former battlefields and collecting photographs and letters. I can't remember a time when I wasn't interested in this subject.As a history PhD student, I adored research; it always seemed such a privilege to be allowed into archives, and behind the scenes in museums, and to have that sense of direct contact with the past. Centuries collapse when you unroll a scroll that no-one else has handled for decades, when you breathe it in, and focus in on the character expressed in the handwriting, and there's a real immediate sense of communing with an individual from another time. I became a commercial researcher after university, but history remained my out-of-hours passion through those years - and, while I worked in Belgium and France, I had the chance to pursue my interest in the First World War. I have a particular fascination with the experience of women during this period, in the difficulties faced by the returning soldier, and in the development of tourism and pilgrimage in the former conflict zones. In 2019, I shifted from researching history to writing historical fiction. I've found that I enjoy exploring the past through sending characters on journeys - the opportunity that it gives you to walk around in someone else's shoes (as it were) and the exciting challenge of really trying to breathe the air of another era. It's the period immediately after the First World War that especially draws me in; time and again, my writing returns to this strange time of dislocation, the physical and psychological upheaval, the processing of memory and experience, and the task of getting back to something that might be called normal.This is a story that so many of us share. As much as the shadow of the First World War fell across my family, so it lengthened across thousands of doorsteps. That's why, as a nation, we keep on going back there. We all have those photographs in our family albums. Don't we? Those stories. Those silences. Those questions.For more information about my books and research, please visit www.cscottbooks.co.uk
