Description

Everything will change, my love, she whispers to her only baby. I will make sure you are protected, looked after, loved. She commits his smell, the feel of him, to memory and fastens the gold St Christopher’s medal around his neck, tucking it into the blanket.Kissing him one last time, she lets him go. And with him go the pieces of her shattered heart.

London, 1940. Clara Knight grew up an orphan in the First World War and is now nursing brave soldiers as a second war rages through Europe. She falls in love with one of her patients, whose warm brown eyes give her hope for a brighter future. But then he must leave, and Clara is alone with their child amidst the bombs raining down on the city… When she is offered the chance to give her son a better life, Clara makes the impossible choice to let him go. She leaves her mother’s precious St Christopher pendant with him, vowing to find him again when the war is over, so they can be a family once more.

Years later. As her life falls apart, Indira’s only solace is spending time with her grandfather. When he begins to tell her stories from his past, he speaks about a woman named Clara that she has never heard of before. Indira can see in his eyes that there’s more he isn’t telling her. She goes looking for the truth… and discovers a tattered package of unsent letters and a gold St Christopher’s medal. Indira is determined to find out what happened to Clara. Her quest will reveal a devastating secret hidden for decades, and change everything she thought she knew about her family…

An unforgettable and heart-breaking novel set in World War Two about the powerful bond between a mother and her child and a betrayal that echoes across generations. Anyone who loves Orphan Train, Before We Were Yours and Shirley Dickson will find The War Child impossible to put down.