From the Publisher
Praise for Alexander McCall Smith:
“A writer who charms many readers . . . McCall Smith’s characters are well drawn and alive.”
—Providence Journal
“McCall Smith’s accomplished novels [are] dependent on small gestures redolent with meaning and main characters blessed with pleasing personalities . . . These novels are gentle probes into the mysteries of human nature.”
—Newsday
“McCall Smith’s novels are beautifully precise and psychologically acute.”
—The Independent (London)
“An excellent old-fashioned storyteller.”
—The Gazette
“McCall Smith’s generous writing and dry humor, his gentleness and humanity, and his ability to evoke a place and a set of characters without caricature or condescension have endeared his books to readers,”
—The New York Times
“A vivid observer and an elegant writer.”
—The Plain Dealer
Library Journal
02/15/2018
Val Eliot is a young "land girl" in England during World War II who rides her bicycle to work on a local farm each day while the able-bodied men are in the service. Val lives with her Aunt Annie and a distant cousin Willy, and the whole community struggles to get by on wartime rations. When the family rescues an abused dog from a nearby farm, their lives begin to change. In a domino effect, the dog, Peter Woodhouse, brings an American airman and a German corporal into Val's simple country life, causing her to reevaluate the definition of "enemy" and "friend." In the style of Jan Karon and Philip Gulley, the author of the "No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" series reveals the extraordinary human spirit found in ordinary lives. VERDICT McCall Smith brings the trademark philosophy, solid characterization, and sense of place found in his contemporary series to this historical stand-alone. This gentle read possesses enough depth to do justice to a turbulent time period.—Christine Barth, Scott Cty. Lib. Syst., IA
School Library Journal
05/01/2018
The author of the popular "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" novels presents a story of love and loss during World War II. Valerie Eliot, a 19-year-old Brit, becomes a Land Girl, or a farmer's helper, part of the Women's Land Army, since able-bodied men are serving in the military. Although a town girl, she enjoys learning about the farm and working with the kind farmer. When she meets Mike Rogers, a U.S. pilot stationed nearby, she falls in love quickly, and they become engaged. Peter Woodhouse, a mistreated sheep dog, ends up living with the airmen and even going on flying missions. When Mike's plane is shot down, he, the crew, and the dog are rescued by the Dutch and later a German soldier, Cpl. Karl "Ubi" Dietrich. The narrative's second half largely describes the life of the German soldier after he returns to his country after the war. There is a lot of plot for such a short book, but it moves along in a straightforward and eventual manner. McCall Smith offers a moving depiction of the hardships faced by the Germans following the war, including the suffering caused by the Soviet Union's blockade of Berlin from 1948 to 1949 (and the incredible feat of the Allied powers flying in food and even coal for Berliners for nearly a year). Readers who want to learn more about life in England during World War II should also read Angela Huth's Land Girls. VERDICT Teens will enjoy the love story and gain insight into the horrors of war in this easily read novel. For high school and public library collections.—Karlan Sick, formerly at New York Public Library
Kirkus Reviews
2018-01-10
The creator of Mma Precious Ramotswe and chronicler of 44 Scotland St. (A Time of Love and Tartan, 2018, etc.) spins a heartwarming tale of love won and lost and won again during and after World War II.Valerie Eliot, a member of the Women's Land Army assigned to help out at Archie Wilkinson's farm, falls in love with American pilot Mike Rogers, and he with her. They get engaged and she gets pregnant, though not in that order, but then Mike gets shot down over occupied Holland together with his unnamed navigator and their mascot, Peter Woodhouse, a sheepdog. Even as Val is painfully schooling herself to relinquish the flickering hope that her bridegroom is still alive, Mike, his navigator, and Peter Woodhouse are rescued by sympathetic locals and improbably protected by Cpl. Karl "Ubi" Dietrich, an occupying officer unsympathetic to the war who thinks its end is so near that there's no point in killing them or turning them in. The end of the war that Ubi has so accurately forecast sends Mike and Peter Woodhouse back to Val in what would feel like a happy ending if it didn't come at the story's halfway point, but a surprising number of tests and tribulations still await Val, Mike, Ubi, and Peter Woodhouse. Indeed, this is one of the author's most resolutely plotted novels since his rewriting of Emma (2015): although the characters display limited possibilities for development, the postwar world proves quite as challenging, and as generous in the opportunities it offers for love and courage and forgiveness, as the world at war.Not even a writer of McCall Smith's benevolence can provide a happy ending for every character who deserves it here. But he leaves you thinking that they've each had a bite of the apple and that all in all, that's a pretty wonderful gift to have been granted.
