Evacuees and Crabapple Trees

At the outbreak of World War II, when Sheila was just seven years old, her parents moved the family out of their native London to stay with an aunt and uncle in Suffolk. To a little girl country life was strange at first, and in stark contrast to the city, where the Battle of Britain was raging. From roaming the fields and learning the names of all of the wildflowers, to spending time with her grandparents, proprietors of a local pub, it was what childhood dreams were made of. When the bombing died down, the family moved back to London, but Sheila would later return to the countryside when she, her husband John and their children arrived at Crabapple Cottage, their new home in Kent. Over the next few years, they had many adventures as they adapted to the seasonal rhythms of country life. Sheila would eventually move back to Suffolk, via a stint in a village shop in the West Country, where she lived out her days.

Sheila Newberry spent her whole life writing but it was not until she was in her 80s that she became one of the country's best-loved saga authors. Divided into five sections of Sheila's life - from 1939 until the 90s - Knee Deep in Plums gives readers a wonderful snapshot of her life, from her time as an evacuee to meeting John and falling in love, to eventually becoming a mother to nine and grandmother to twenty-two. Throughout all of this Sheila was writing stories - her first novels as a child, written in purple ink, and a spell writing the local pantomime, before eventually arriving at the heartwarming novels her readers love to this day.

With a foreword by bestselling saga author, Rosie Goodwin.