The Kew Gardens Girls at War
A heartwarming tale of wartime at Kew Gardens
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
It's 1940 and for newlywed Daisy Turner, Kew Gardens is a haven away from the bombs that are falling nightly on her East End home. She grew up around plants - her parents met when they were gardeners at Kew in the last war. And her work on the Dig For Victory campaign at Kew keeps her occupied while her husband Rex, is away in the RAF.
Beth Sanderson works with Daisy at the gardens, but she dreams of being a doctor while juggling her gardening job with nursing shifts. And there's the added complication of her forbidden romance with her colleague, Gus Campbell. Gus is from Jamaica and it seems impossible for he and Beth to be together. But can they overcome the prejudice they're facing and build a life together?
Meanwhile Louisa Armitage, who worked at Kew Gardens during the First World War, is feeling old and useless, having retired to the countryside. So she jumps at the chance to work with Kew again and rally the WI to get them involved in growing plants for medicines.
With Daisy and Beth becoming minor celebrities and featuring in magazines and on newsreels, the Kew Gardens Girls are the talk of the town. But when tragedy strikes and Daisy's life is changed forever, it falls to her friends at Kew Gardens to step in and save her and her family. Before it's too late...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lovell follows up her WWI-era The Kew Gardens Girls with an emotional story of a new generation of brave Britons. It's 1940 and newlywed Daisy Cooper—whose mother, Ivy, and godmother, Louisa, were among the women who took up men's jobs at Kew Gardens during WWI—has just sent her dashing RAF pilot husband, Rex, to fight the Germans when she's invited to Kew Gardens to work as a gardener. There, she's paired with elegant nurse Beth Sanderson, who longs to be a doctor—but her physician father Geoffrey refuses to sign the necessary papers for her to start training. Through their work, Daisy and Beth become fast friends—and then Daisy, who recently learned she is pregnant, receives word that Rex has been killed in action. Beth, meanwhile, has fallen in love with a Jamaican cardiologist and must contend with her father's racism and bigotry, not to mention that of society at large. The horrible reality of war is on full display in this engrossing story, which Lovell enhances with a visceral sense of bombs falling and terrible news arriving via telegrams. This has "movie option" written all over it.
