Motherland
A Novel
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From an Academy Award–nominated screenwriter, an epic novel of love and loss and the long shadows war leaves behind.
Summer, 1942. Kitty, an army driver stationed in Sussex, meets Ed, a Royal Marine commando, and Larry, a liaison officer with Combined Ops. She falls instantly in love with Ed, who falls in love with her. So does Larry. Both men go off to war, and Ed wins the highest military honor for his bravery. But sometimes heroes don’t make the best husbands.
Motherland follows Kitty, Ed, and Larry from wartime England and the brutally tragic Dieppe raid to Nazi-occupied France, India after the war, and Jamaica before independence. Against this ever-changing backdrop—as they witness history being made and participate in the smaller dramas of romance, friendship, and parenthood—these three friends make choices that will determine the challenges and triumphs of their lives. But the insistent current running through all they experience is the unacknowledged tension of the love triangle that binds them together and must somehow be resolved.
Written by an award-winning screenwriter whose novels have earned extraordinary critical praise, Motherland is a compelling, page-turning narrative brimming with stunning war scenes, pageantry, politics, and questions about faith and art, as well as quiet, intimate moments of passion, doubt, and longing. Above all, it is a great love story about three people struggling to find happiness and meaning amid war and its aftermath.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Screenwriter Nicholson returns to the novel with a WWII love story that evolves into a study of postwar marital malaise, culminating in a bittersweet resolution. Marine commando Ed Avenell and liaison officer Larry Cornford, friends stationed in Sussex in 1942, both fall for army driver Kitty Teale. Choosing charm over humility, Kitty marries Ed just before the men head to France, where Ed is taken prisoner earning him a Victoria Cross while Larry, showing less bravura, returns safely to visit Kitty and baby daughter Pamela. At war's end Ed returns a troubled man, struggling with inner demons as Kitty and Larry bond. Neither Larry's affair with an artists' model, his stint with Mountbatten in India, or his own dysfunctional marriage disrupts their friendship. Years pass before a sentimental journey to where it all began clarifies past mistakes and offers some a second chance. Pamela (mother of Guy Caulder and grandmother of Alice Dickinson from The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life) narrates from the present, forming the framework in which Nicholson develops his complex characters. Depictions of postwar France, pre-independence India, and battlefield chaos add scope to Nicholson's ruminations on love, faith, decency, the choices ordinary people make, and how they cope with the consequences.
