The Sick Rose

Isobel Keenan is researching a wartime connection between her late grandmother and a young woman Betsy Unwinton who reputedly disappeared from the women’s internment camp on the Isle of Man in 1940. Her research leads her to the autobiography of a seventeen-year-old Austrian refugee, Josef Kronfeld, who describes a romantic relationship with Betsy. His autobiography explains how he came to arrive in England as a Kindertransport refugee. However, Josef’s autobiography falls short of revealing the connection between Betsy and Isobel’s grandmother. This remains a mystery Isobel still wants to resolve. Meanwhile, Isobel has own local race discrimination problems to deal with and the storylines begin to merge.