Avenue

The lives of four families intersect in the first novel of master storyteller R. F. Delderfield's Avenue saga, set in an English suburb between 1919 when one war has just ended and 1940 when another has just begun In the spring of 1919, his wife's death brings Sergeant Jim Carver home from the front. He returns to be a single parent to his seven children in a place he has never lived: Number Twenty, Manor Park Avenue. The Carvers' neighbor Eunice Fraser, at Number Twenty-Two, has also known tragedy. Her soldier husband was killed, leaving her and her eight-year-old son Esme to fend for themselves. At Number Four, Edith Clegg takes in lodgers and looks after her sister, Becky, whose mind has been shattered by a past trauma. No one knows much about the Friths, at Number Seventeen, who moved to the Avenue before the war.   The Dreaming Suburb, the first novel in the Avenue saga that also includes The Avenue Goes to War, takes readers into the lives of these families as their hopes, dreams, and struggles are played out against a radically changing world.

World War II becomes an undeniable reality for the families of the Avenue in master storyteller R. F. Delderfield's gripping sequel to The Dreaming Suburb With the world at war again, the inhabitants of the Avenue confront an uncertain future.  Longtime Number Twenty resident Jim Carver once found fighting immoral, but when Luftwaffe bombs fall on his beloved Avenue he dedicates himself to the war effort. His eldest son Archie has come a long way from grocer's errand boy to owner of a chain of successful shops. Now he has fallen into an illicit affair with a neighbor on the Avenue whose husband is away fighting in the war. Esther Frith lives a solitary life on the Avenue, seemingly oblivious to the dangers of falling bombs now that the ravages of war have struck her family. Across the road at Number Twenty-Two, reclusive Harold Godbeer hates what the war is doing to his country.  The Avenue Goes to War, the second novel in the Avenue saga that begins with The Dreaming Suburb, is a spellbinding novel about the connections forged between people during wartime.