Land Girls
1 primary work • 4 total works
Book 3
The Second World War is drawing to a close in Europe. For three eventful years, the land girls at Post Stone Farm have worked together, defying Hitler in their own way. They have witnessed love and loss, found their independence, and made lifetime friends. Now, in the final months of conflict, Alice Todd prepares for life at the farm to change forever.
Her three years as warden of a Land Army hostel have transformed Alice's life. From damaged, deserted wife, she has emerged self-confident and even ambitious. With peacetime approaching she must prepare to say goodbye to her land girls and decide on a future for her young son and herself. But what of Roger Bayliss, the enigmatic farm-owner to whom she is increasingly drawn? What is this strange cloud which hangs over him and is destroying not only his relationship with his own son but with Alice herself?
In this moving finale to the incredibly popular land girls trilogy, Alice and her land girls come to terms with life after the war.
Her three years as warden of a Land Army hostel have transformed Alice's life. From damaged, deserted wife, she has emerged self-confident and even ambitious. With peacetime approaching she must prepare to say goodbye to her land girls and decide on a future for her young son and herself. But what of Roger Bayliss, the enigmatic farm-owner to whom she is increasingly drawn? What is this strange cloud which hangs over him and is destroying not only his relationship with his own son but with Alice herself?
In this moving finale to the incredibly popular land girls trilogy, Alice and her land girls come to terms with life after the war.
For ten volunteer Land Girls assigned to a Devonshire farm, the increasing momentum of war in Europe transcends the tensions of their traditionally estranged backgrounds and drives them together to support each other in matters of love, family and belief. Alice Todd, shaken by the trials of her own life, must prove herself a capable Warden to the tough country folk and an uncompromising farm owner, while providing for her young son and contending with the whims of her newly liberated charges.
It is early spring in 1944 and the war in Europe continues, with the Allies poised to invade northern France. For Alice Todd, it is the start of her second year as warden of the Land Army hostel in the wild Devonshire countryside - Lower Post Stone Farm - and a time of change as she recovers from the aftermath of her broken marriage. Alice becomes increasingly self-reliant and confident, learning to balance her new working lifestyle with her continuing role as a mother to her only son. Her leadership has won her the affection and confidence of the Land Girls in her charge and, as the seeds of friendship are sewn, she finds herself increasingly caught up in the lives of the women that surround her, lives that are complex, humorous and sometimes tragic. Despite the momentous changes of the past few years, Alice sees little difference in the face reflected in the mirror, but inside she has found reserves of strength she didn't know she had. Her spirit attracts the admiration of Roger Bayliss, her enigmatic employer, but is his attention going to help or hinder her new-found independence?
If no-one recalled her arrival at the hostel they were unlikely to forget her departure from it. Through the boisterous adventures of the other Land Girls as war ends and peacetime begins, Evie's story has run, out of sight and out of mind, until the distruptive arrival, one July evening, of Corporal Norman Clark. But this is not to be the end of Evie's connection with the Post Stone farms or with Roger, Alice and Edward John, Georgina and Christopher, Ferdie and Mabel, Hester, Dave and Rose Crocker, or with Giorgio, the Italian POW, who loves her.