The party includes a small, unaccompanied child, Pamela, whom Ellen volunteers to look after until her parents can be found, but as the war progresses the days turn to years.

It is 1940 and a busload of bombed-out civilians from Southampton has arrived in the village of Upton, where Ellen Parr and her much older husband Selwyn, a miller with whom she has what’s described as a mariage blanc, are helping to find them beds for the night. The writing is often dazzling – a child’s voice is “clear, piping, like a twig peeled of its bark” – and this, too, lifts what might have been a sentimental story into different territory altogether. From the off, Frances Liardet’s second novel, published 25 years after her first, distances itself from nostalgia and insists on its own terms. Beyond distance, beyond time, beyond life itself.D omestic stories of women’s lives in wartime are common in genre publishing but rarer in literary fiction. Spanning the sweep of the twentieth century, We Must Be Brave explores the fierce love that we feel for our children and the power of that love to endure. But with the end of the fighting comes the realization that Pamela was never theirs to keep. As the war rages on, love grows where it was least expected, surprising them all. Little Pamela, it seems, is entirely alone.Įllen has always believed she does not want children, but when she takes Pamela into her home, the child cracks open the past Ellen thought she had escaped and the future she and her husband Selwyn had dreamed for themselves.

In Upton village, amid the chaos, newly married Ellen Parr finds a girl asleep, unclaimed at the back of an empty bus. As German bombs fall on Southampton, England during World War II, the city's residents flee to the surrounding villages. The child who changed everything.ĭecember 1940. Beyond distance, beyond time, beyond life itself.Ī woman.

Spanning World War II and the sweep of the twentieth century, We Must Be Brave explores the fierce love that we feel for our children and the power of that love to endure. 'A powerful story that proves how love itself requires courage.' -Delia Owens, author of Where the Crawdads Sing

Frances liardet we must be brave