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2000s: The story of a very unique and beautiful friendship
Song of the Skylark
What you need to know before your trail
Lizzie has returned to her parents’ home in Suffolk in order to lick her wounds. She’s been fired from a job after having an affair with her boss and so is sent packing. Not having much to do and feeling a bit lost, she is roped into volunteering work at the local home and strikes up a friendship with one of the women there – Clarissa.
Clarissa starts to share her stories about life in Suffolk in WW2 and the life she had there and the challenges she had to face. Clarissa has had struggles none of us have had to think about but which teach Lizzie just what it means to take life as it comes and to make the best of things.
As her story unfolds, we go back into Clarissa’s past as that is the best way to see the future.
Travel Guide
World War II in Suffolk
This is the most evocative and time specific part of the novel and is where the main message of old fashioned love and determination of a woman when the whole world seem to be against her. Clarissa doesn’t have any of the freedoms and opportunities that Lizzie does and her story is more poignant and true.
England – Shillingsbury
The village of Shillingsbury much of the novel takes place is fictional but the setting of war and wartime anguish is very real indeed. Similarly the village of Woodside and Great Magnus are fictional.
“Down in the village there was a false sense of jollity. It seemed to Clarissa that whenever she went to the shops, people were arming themselves with a veneer of British Bulldog spirit, laughing in the field of adversity.”
America – Boston
1939 in Boston, sees Clarissa’s early life revealed bit by bit. Like old faded photographs from her memory. She is warned by lawyers in Boston that with the threat of war imminent it would be unwise to cross the Atlantic now
Grandma Ethel is ill and wants her home but she reveals that Boston is not longer home to her, Shillingbury is. Life here at first is quaint with the picturesque cottages and village life and is very different to the life she has known.
The author is keen to point out that the SS Belle Etoile never existed but that it was based on the SS Normandie which she describes as one of the most beautiful ocean liners ever built.
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information:
Twitter: @theericajames
Facebook: /ericajamesauthor
Web: ericajames.co.uk
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