Home and Away: A World War II Christmas
A historical fiction novel told from the perspective of a son fighting on the battlefields of Europe during World War II and his mother, struggling with worry and uncertainty about her soldier son while she tries to keep a semblance of a normal, happy Christmas holiday back on the homefront. Norma Hayes has always tried to make Christmas special for her family, but 1944 will make that more difficult with money being tight and wartime rationing making everything hard to come by. Aware of his mother’s hardships and the worry from having her eldest son at war, second son, Dennis, is determined to buy his mother a special gift this Christmas, a lavender blue dress he hopes will bring her comfort as a symbol of special times gone by and the hope of a brighter future with the family reunited at war’s end.Meantime, on the long campaign to free Europe, her soldier son carrys on as best he can, the horrors of war taking its heavy toll on armies and civilians alike. On a battlefield far from home in Holland with his 101st Airborne battalion, he catches a familiar scent of lavender which briefly transports him back to the homefront to the perfume scent his mother wore, giving him a short respite and reuniting the family once again if only in his imagination. This historical fiction novel is a nostalgic and tender story about the power of love, the reality of war, and the hope we all have that things will turn out all right.
Excerpt:
It was 1944 and Glen, Dennis’s big brother, was with the army’s 101st Airborne Division, fighting in Europe. When the last letter had come from Glen-almost two weeks ago-he had been at the battlefront in Holland. Newspapers were reporting heavy casualties among the Allied forces there. Linda and Sharon didn’t entirely understand the danger, but Dennis did, and he feared every day that bad news might come. The kitchen was warmer than it really needed to be, but it was cozy, and Dennis loved the smell of turkey and the pies-and baked bread. He had eaten too much, of course, but he wasn’t going to stop until he had a slice of each pie. Over on the kitchen cabinet, the radio was softly playing. A big band was performing “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town.” The local station in Ogden, Utah, had begun to play Christmas music that day. When Linda began to sing the words to the song, Dad finally seemed to notice, and he groaned. “They start earlier every year,” he said. “The stores must pay the radio station to play that stuff. That’s all Christmas is now-a chance to boost sales.” It was what Dad said every year. But Mom loved Christmas, and she did all she could to make the holidays nice.
ISBN: 978-1-62972-093-7
Publisher: Shadow Mountain
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