Friends at Thrush Green
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
It's spring in Thrush Green - but the new season brings far more than the villagers anticipate...
Thrush Green is buzzing with gossip, which everyone is keen to share with two ex-schoolteachers, who have returned to visit their friends in the village.
The old schoolhouse has just been sold, and the villagers are eager to welcome the new owners, the Lesters. Alan Lester seems to be perfectly pleasant, but rumours soon circulate about his wife, Margaret.
Equal cause for speculation is the odd behaviour of long-standing resident Bertha Lovelock. And what of farmer Percy Hodge? Can he really be contemplating marriage to the rather wayward Doreen Lilly?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Thriving on juicy, well-meaning gossip, the residents of an old-fashioned English country village conspire to rescue one another in this rambling, gently humorous novel by the pseudonymous author of more than 30 books about Thrush Green. Tongues start wagging when new headmaster Alan Lester hesitates to move into a house, vacated by retired teachers Dorothy and Agnes, that will put him closer to the neighbors. (His wife, it turns out, is overly fond of drink.) Three elderly sisters living in a cottage crammed with antiques rouse concern when one shoplifts scones from the local sweet shop, steals from friends and threatens to bequeath her sisters' belongings to the church. Rumors of matrimony jeopardize the status quo: lonely old Percy Hodge woos flighty servant girls and stirs the derision of his pub companion, a shuffling sexton; the schoolteachers return from the seaside for a visit, disclosing that Dorothy may run off with the blind gentleman to whom she reads. Human nature, the kind intervention of friends and the devotion of the rector and his wife put all to rights. Goodall's pen-and-ink sketches are cozily apt for the story's heartwarming simplicity.