Rebuilding

A Fond Farewell For The Tobacco Girls by Lizzie Lane is a marvellous historical novel and the sixth book in The Tobacco Girls series. It can be read as a stand-alone.

The action is set in 1945 as the second world war in Europe has ended but the war in Japan continues until August. We follow lives trying to adjust to peacetime.

War had robbed so many of so much. Men returned, a shadow of their former selves, sometimes with limbs missing, sometimes with altered minds. Some men focused on what they had lost and not what remained. It would take the purity of a child to remind them.

Old soldiers from World War I help to rehabilitate young soldiers from World War II as they bond over a mutual love of flowers. We learn the importance of poppies.

Family is important. Sometimes family is not blood related but heart related.