A woman’s future is determined by fate and choice in a gripping WWII novel about danger, triumph, and second chances by the New York Times bestselling author of The Venice Sketchbook and The Tuscan Child.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Rhys Bowen’s Where The Sky Begins, which is out August 2nd 2022!
London, 1940. Bombs fall and Josie Banks’s world crumbles around her. Her overbearing husband, Stan, is unreachable, called to service. Her home, a ruin of rubble and ash. Josie’s beloved tearoom boss has been killed, and Josie herself is injured, with nothing left and nowhere to go.
Evacuated to the English countryside, Josie ends up at the estate of the aristocratic Miss Harcourt, a reluctant host to the survivors of the Blitz. Awed as she is by the magnificent landscape, Josie sees opportunity. Josie convinces Miss Harcourt to let her open a humble tea shop, seeing it as a chance for everyone to begin again. When Josie meets Mike Johnson, a handsome Canadian pilot stationed at a neighboring bomber base, a growing intimacy brings her an inner peace she’s never felt before. Then Stan returns from the war.
Now a threat looms larger than anyone imagined. And a dangerous secret is about to upend Josie’s life again. Her newfound courage will be put to the test if she is to emerge, like a survivor, triumphant.
In the middle of Sunday night, she was awoken by the wail of the air raid siren. She sat up cautiously, trying not to bang her head on the tabletop above her. How far off was the siren? She was already learning when she needed to take action fast and when it was all right to get dressed and then decide if she needed to shelter. In the distance came the rumble of approaching planes and the sound of the ack-ack. The rumble grew louder. So many of them this time. Josie wondered if she was doing the right thing, staying put under her table. But then the first wave of planes was overhead. No time to go to the shelter in the tube station now.
Suddenly there was a whooshing sound and a deafening explosion nearby. The windows were blown in, the blackout curtains luckily stopping most of the glass from flying into the room. Sooty air came around the shredded curtains. The smell of burning and brick dust. Instantly the sounds from outside were magnified—screams, shouts, the bell of a fire engine.
Some poor person on this street, she thought and wondered if she should come out from under the table to take a look. She was reaching out to find her slippers, mindful of the broken glass, when there came a second whoosh. Then, almost instantly, an ear-splitting blast. She was thrown back, the air sucked from her lungs as she tried to cry out. The world was falling around her. Bricks were raining down. Something hit her head, and she knew no more.
Josie opened her eyes to total darkness. It hurt to breathe. Something was across her face. My hair, she thought and tried to lift a hand to brush it away. But her arm wouldn’t move. She tried the other arm. Then her legs. Something was pressing on her from all sides. She was trapped. Buried. She wiggled her toes and was relieved that they at least worked. So did her fingers. At least she wasn’t paralyzed, but the implication of where she was began to dawn on her.
“A tomb,” she said to herself. “I’m in a tomb.” And she felt panic rising because she had been buried prematurely. But then she heard the sound of an all-clear siren and the closer clanging of an ambulance bell.
“Help!” she called, trying to make a parched mouth work and force air into her lungs. “Somebody help me.” The latter phrase was stopped by a fit of coughing as she breathed in the dust and dirt that covered her. She tried to see where she was. She realized then that her house must have collapsed around her, and she was covered in debris. Odd slivers of red light came in through the gaps in the walls, creating a surreal glow through the layer of dust, but she couldn’t make out the table under which she had been sleeping. Had she left her shelter before the bomb dropped? She couldn’t remember. And then, as she looked up, a sudden gust of cold wind stirred up the dust, and it cleared for a moment, making her gasp. Above her she had a glimpse of the night sky, and she was looking at a star. She took it as an omen, a sign from heaven that everything was going to be all right.
