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A Novel
by Patti Callahan Henry
Book Reviewed by:When a woman discovers a rare book that has connections to her past, long-held secrets about her missing sister and their childhood spent in the English countryside during World War II are revealed.
In the war-torn London of 1939, fourteen-year-old Hazel and five-year-old Flora are evacuated to a rural village to escape the horrors of the Second World War. Living with the kind Bridie Aberdeen and her teenage son, Harry, in a charming stone cottage along the River Thames, Hazel fills their days with walks and games to distract her young sister, including one that she creates for her sister and her sister alone—a fairy tale about a magical land, a secret place they can escape to that is all their own.
But the unthinkable happens when young Flora suddenly vanishes while playing near the banks of the river. Shattered, Hazel blames herself for her sister's disappearance, and she carries that guilt into adulthood as a private burden she feels she deserves.
Twenty years later, Hazel is in London, ready to move on from her job at a cozy rare bookstore to a career at Sotheby's. With a charming boyfriend and her elegantly timeworn Bloomsbury flat, Hazel's future seems determined. But her tidy life is turned upside down when she unwraps a package containing an illustrated book called Whisperwood and the River of Stars. Hazel never told a soul about the imaginary world she created just for Flora. Could this book hold the secrets to Flora's disappearance? Could it be a sign that her beloved sister is still alive after all these years?
As Hazel embarks on a feverish quest, revisiting long-dormant relationships and bravely opening wounds from her past, her career and future hang in the balance. An astonishing twist ultimately reveals the truth in this transporting and refreshingly original novel about the bond between sisters, the complications of conflicted love, and the enduring magic of storytelling.
Ultimately, it is the importance of stories and the necessity of storytelling that underpin everything in this beautiful, heartrending novel. Stories can bring us together, create an unbreakable bond between people, reveal things we might not otherwise be able to see about ourselves, our lives, and the world we live in; stories, even though imagined, can carry the truth...continued
Full Review
(675 words)
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(Reviewed by Jo-Anne Blanco).
1.jpg "Map of the Glass Town Federation and surrounding lands")
In Patti Callahan Henry's The Secret Book of Flora Lea, Hazel Linden, 14, and her sister Flora, 5, are evacuated to Oxfordshire during Operation Pied Piper in World War II. To help Flora through the trauma of war and evacuation, Hazel creates a secret magical woodland world called Whisperwood and the River of Stars, to which she and Flora can escape through hidden doorways in the real world and have adventures. However, the creation of Whisperwood and the telling of stories becomes a terrible burden to Hazel, as she blames it for the tragedy that lies at the heart of the novel. In her grief and guilt, she stops telling stories and abandons her dream of being a writer. Only when she receives a book written by an American author about ...
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No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home.
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Chris Bohjalian, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Lioness and The Flight Attendant
A world war and a fairy tale collide in the British countryside in 1940--and Patti Callahan Henry is the perfect novelist to explore how the living are forever changed. The Secret Book of Flora Lea is a treasure: moving, surprising, and deeply evocative of an England that everyday walked the tightrope between heartbreak and hope.
