Simonson’s writing has a distinctly English flavor. it’s this kind of push-pull situation,” she says in a voice that still sounds quite English to this American interviewer. I’m one of those people who believes that children need to go out in the world-the farther the better-but those of us who go off to explore are left with a hole. While she loves the States, and visits England often, Simonson admits to “a deep longing for home. Simonson has spent most of her adult life in the United States, where she moved with her American husband to pursue a career in advertising, and eventually raised two sons. I don’t have to put up with the rain or the warm beer, so I’m left to plumb all these deep emotional wells without any of the hindrances of daily, petty annoyances!”
In her long-awaited second novel, following the 2011 word-of-mouth hit Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Helen Simonson returns readers to her hometown of Rye, East Sussex-although, as she admits during a phone call to her adopted hometown of Brooklyn, she’s able to view it through “somewhat rose-colored glasses. The small town of Rye doesn’t know it yet, but her arrival is about to shake up the status quo-not to mention the lives of town matron Agatha Kent and her two nephews. Soon the limits of progress, and the old ways, will be tested as this small Sussex town and its inhabitants go to war.As the summer of 1914 draws to a close, 23-year-old Beatrice Nash is headed to East Sussex by train. For despite Agatha's reassurances, the unimaginable is coming. For her part, mourning the death of her beloved father, who has left her penniless, Beatrice simply wants to be left alone to pursue her teaching and writing.īut just as Beatrice comes alive to the beauty of the Sussex landscape and the colorful characters who populate Rye, the perfect summer is about to end. When Beatrice Nash arrives with one trunk and several large crates of books, it is clear she is significantly more freethinkingand attractivethan anyone believes a Latin teacher should be. And Agatha has more immediate concerns she has just risked her carefully built reputation by pushing for the appointment of a woman to replace the Latin master. Agatha's husband works in the Foreign Office, and she is certain he will ensure that the recent saber rattling over the Balkans won't come to anything.
Hugh Grange, down from his medical studies, is visiting his Aunt Agatha, who lives with her husband in the small, idyllic coastal town of Rye. It is the end of England's brief Edwardian summer, and everyone agrees that the weather has never been so beautiful.
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