About A Kind of Homecoming:

A Kind of Homecoming

The Novella takes place in Northern England on the eve of the Great War, where eighteen-year-old Rose Maddox is leaving home to attend nursing school. The daughter of a country veterinarian and a progressive mother, Rose is encouraged to think beyond the boundaries conventional life offers. When she tells her mother she is not sure their country village will be the place she calls home. Her mother tells her that home is not always where you live, but who you share it with. Rose is excited to be taking her first steps into the wide world and writing the next chapter of her life. Rose meets a young German named Sebastian, an apprentice at a motorcycle shop. He too is a restless spirit looking for something that is just out of reach. He shares with her his dream of travel, and she feels an immediate connection. On his Enfield motorcycle, they roar through spring and early summer tearing around the Yorkshire countryside. She finds herself falling in love with him and envisions a life together. Sebastian returns home to visit his family and tell them he is proposing to Rose when he goes back. War breaks out before he can return to England. Rose is hopeful that the conflict will quickly end, and they will be reunited.
Two years later, Rose is serving as a nurse near the front lines in France as the British launch the battle of the Somme. Traumatized by the carnage around her, she struggles to maintain her sanity. During the height of the battle, she is unnerved at the sight of a wounded German soldier she mistakes for Sebastian. An exhausted Rose is sent to get some rest. She returns to her room and tries to drink away the pain. Sebastian is an ambulance driver in a German medical unit. He is taking incredible risks to cut through the numbness that has enveloped him. The pair are unexpectedly reunited during a swap of wounded prisoners. Their fleeting exchange inspires them to remember their time together as something good that life has to offer. As the war winds down, Rose meets a young Scottish officer named Franklin who is clearly enamored with her. The two share a passionate kiss on armistice day but she chalks it up to nothing more than the excitement of the moment. She returns to her childhood home in England. Franklin writes her repeatedly. Rose, lost and directionless, initially resists responding. When the letters stop coming, Rose writes Franklin, telling him the war has damaged her irreparably and he’d be better off with anybody but her. Franklin writes to Rose’s father to ask for her hand in marriage. One week later, Franklin surprises her by showing up on her doorstep and proposing. Rose accepts, realizing she was finally home.
Four decades later, Rose is traveling in Alsace where she stops in a small country village to visit the grave of a British airman shot down in World War 2. The airman is the son of a nurse she served with in the war. At the cemetery, she asks for directions from a young man, who responds in English. He tells her he emigrated to America several years earlier and has returned home to be married. He stopped in the cemetery to pay respects to his father. Rose sees the name on the tomb and realizes it is Sebastian. She breaks down, telling the young man she knew his father before the war. The young man tells her that his father rarely spoke of the war but did confide in him that he once loved a young Englishwoman and was going to ask her to marry him before the war took away the chance. The young man tells Rose that when he wrestled with the decision on whether to leave Alsace for America, Sebastian urged him to seize the opportunity before it passed.

Buy the book, and follow the author on social media:

Get the Book Here.

Learn more about the writer. Visit the Author’s Website.

Visit the Facebook Fan Page.

[Read more…]