Flatlands

Author: Sue Hubbard

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) | Second World War fiction | 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 | Second World War

Published on 6^th June 2024 by Pushkin Press (ONE) in the United Kingdom.

Paperback / softback | 272 pages
198mm x 129mm | 0g

Flatlands is a homage to Paul Gallico's classic short story The Snow Goose. Freda is a twelve-year-old evacuee from East London, who has been sent away at the start of the war, leaving behind everything familiar to her, to escape the expected German bombing. In her new temporary home in Lincolnshire, Freda finds herself billeted with a strange, cold and, ultimately, abusive couple, whose lives mirror the barren landscape in which they live a hand to mouth existence, based upon subsistence farming and poaching. There, deprived of any warmth, she meets a young man - Philip Rhayader -a conscientious objector who has left Oxford and his prospective vocation in the church following a nervous breakdown. Slowly, he introduces her to the wonders of the natural world and its enduring power to heal.