Rachel Malik

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE 2018**

'A surprisingly touching account of hidden lives forced out of the shadows' Sunday Times

One day in 1940 Rene Hargreaves walks out on her family and the city to take a position as a Land Girl at the remote Starlight farm. There she will live with and help lonely farmer Elsie Boston.

At first Elsie and Rene are unsure of one another - strangers from different worlds. But over time they each come to depend on the other. They become inseparable.

Until the day a visitor from Rene's past arrives and their careful, secluded life is thrown into confusion. Suddenly, all they have built together is threatened. What will they do to protect themselves? And are they prepared for the consequences?

'So lovely, gentle yet enthralling' Claire Fuller

'Quietly beautiful and brilliant. This is no bucolic idyll but an unfolding of a plot that constantly twists and turns and surprises. A truly wonderful, memorable novel**' Judges of the Walter Scott Prize 2018**