Children, War and...Bookshops

The Secret Book of Flora Lee & The Air Raid Book Club

My mom was an English war bride and I was fascinated by her stories about life during World War II when I was a child. She was old enough to join the Women’s Royal Air Force, where she packed parachutes and, later, became a switchboard operator. But she had a sister and brother, thirteen and fifteen years younger, just little children when the war began.

Her family lived in the East End of London, where the worst of the Blitz occurred, but when the British government launched Operation Pied Piper, eventually evacuating some 800,000 children from urban areas, my grandparents decided to keep little ones close. Several of their cousins were sent to the country, though—in one case, a pair of sisters, sent to the same village, who had very different experiences. The sickly older sister was billeted with a doctor’s family that took such good care of her she didn’t want to leave when the war was over. The younger, billeted with a family that resented the requirement to take in a child, spent the war desperately unhappy. She couldn’t wait to come home, my mom said. Though home, once they got there, was nothing like it had been.

I remembered this story when, researching WW2 for my novel Faithful Women, I came upon photographs that captured the chaos of those evacuations—children tagged like parcels, gas masks over their shoulders, some clutching dolls or teddy bears, some waving tiny British flags as they were led away from their sobbing mothers.

The Secret Book of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Harvey begins with a little girl playing on the banks of river who slips, sending her beloved teddy bear Berry tumbling toward the water. Someone is calling for her but, determined to save Berry, the little girl ignores the voice and carefully, carefully starts down the bank to save him—

Next, we meet fourteen-year-old Hazel Linden and her five-year-old sister Flora Lea in their London flat. Still grieving for their father, who’d been killed in a training accident early in the war, their mom tells them she’s decided to send them to the country—and a few pages later, there they are in one of those wartime photographs. Their destination turns out to be Oxford, where the children are lined up and townspeople (some pretty scary-looking) survey them and make their choices. But Hazel and Flora are lucky! Harry Aberdeen, a boy about Hazel’s age, convinces his mom Birdie into choosing them. By the end of the day they’ve settled into Birdie and Harry’s cozy stone cottage near the River Thames.

Yes. Pay attention to the river.

Harry and Birdie couldn’t be kinder and Hazel and Flora are happy exploring the woods and meadows surrounding the cottage. But, missing their mom terribly, Hazel makes up Whisperwood, a secret magical land full of stories, an escape for when they’re feeling sad. No one, not even Harry—whom Hazel has come to love—knows about it.

When Flora vanishes one day, Hazel believes she’s gone looking for Whisperwood. Guilty, grief-stricken when her sister can’t be found, she turns away from Birdie and Harry to punish herself.

Twenty years later, she’s working at Hogan’s, a rare books store in London, about to embark on a career at Sotheby’s. But on her last day at Hogans, she unwraps a package from America containing a book called Whisperwood and the River of Stars. Opening it, she finds the story she told Flora in their secret place all those years ago.

I’ll leave you to the pleasure of discovering, along with Hazel, how that story made its way to America and into a book—not to mention her sometimes heartwarming, sometimes heartbreaking journey backward to find her own true self.

Could Flora possibly still be alive?

I’m not telling!

But I will say, as a writer, that Patti Callahan Henry’s tour de force plotting blew me away. If you could see the novel in a diagram, each question it poses would be a ball thrown up and left hanging to come down at exactly the right moment until, at the end, every ball has landed, every question has been answered in the most satisfying way.

The Air Raid Book Club, by Annie Lyons, is also about bookshops and evacuated kids—perfect if you prefer a cozier read. The bookstore is Bingham Books, founded by Gertie Bingham and her husband Harry after World War I. The kid is Hedy, a Jewish refugee from Germany, taken in by Gertie despite her misgivings. She’s still grieving Harry’s recent death and isn’t sure she wants to share their home with anyone, let alone a teenage girl she doesn’t know. Childless, she’s not sure she’ll be able to care for Hedy as a mother would. And Hedy is intense, sometimes difficult.

But when the Blitz begins in earnest and they have the idea to start the Air Raid Book Club, Gertie and Hedy’s relationship grows from dedication to this common cause to friendship and, eventually, love. There’s much spirited debate over the Air Raid Book Club choices, which book club members read in the public shelters, and much discussion of the books at Bingham Books when the sirens stop and folks can go about their business again.

The book’s cast of characters is delightful: Gertie’s perky assistant, Betty, her debonair long-time friend Charles, haughty Margery Fortescue, and cranky Miss Snipp. Elizabeth Chambers and her cheeky son makes time in the Anderson shelter bearable. Everyone loves Gertie’s faithful old lab, Hemingway.

Over the course of the war, Hedy falls in love with Betty’s brother Sam and, when he enlists, adds worry for him to worry for her parents and brother, stranded in Germany. People share rations to celebrate each other’s birthdays and carry on with holiday traditions the best they can. When word comes that some of the boys from the town have been taken prisoner, Margery Fortescue surprises everyone, opening a center next to Binghams to send the book club picks (along the occasional PG Wodehouse to keep up their spirits) to British prisoners all over Europe, as well as warm socks, sweaters and packets of tea.

Always, there is tea! Always, it makes things better!

My mom remembered the World War II Homefront as a time when people pulled together, displaying courage, patience, kindness, and grit. It wasn’t only that way, I know now, but The Air Raid Book Club offers a lovely picture of a community at its best under the most difficult of circumstances.