Max Weston, twenty-one and a newly commissioned lance corporal, leaves home for his first posting in central Africa. Fiercely patriotic and completely at home in the army, he is eager to make a difference. He never comes back. His parents Caroline and Andrew are devastated by the death of their only child. The overwhelming love Caroline has always felt for her son is now matched by the intensity of her loss, and as she is borne away on a private ocean of grief the moorings of their marriage begin to come loose. The silence is broken by the arrival of Andrew's mother, Elsa, who at the age of ninety-eight can no longer look after herself. Caroline has never felt good enough for this elegant, cuttingly courteous lady and has lived for years in fear of putting a foot wrong. Now, suddenly, Caroline has the upper hand. As Elsa lies, marooned and disorientated, in the spare room, the past unspools in her mind, throwing up fragments of her anxious childhood in 1920s Richmond - under the shadow of her father, a soldier who came back from the Great War a different man. A stunning, delicate portrait of a family bookended by war, Home Fires explores the legacy of loss, the strictures of class and the long road to redemption.
- New eBook additions
- Available now
- Most popular
- Childhood Classic eBooks
- Dyslexia
- Islamophobia Awareness Month
- Unmissable Picture Books
- Try something different
- Crime Doesn't Pay
- Novella & Short Story Classics
- Read-Along
- Out-of-this-world Sci-Fi
- Get Creative at Home
- See all
- New audiobook additions
- Islamophobia Awareness Month
- Books on Film
- Try something different
- Available now
- Read by a Celeb
- Most popular
- New kids additions
- New teen additions
- Interesting Lives: Memoirs & Biographies
- Crime Doesn't Pay
- Popular Audiobooks
- Series Starters
- See all