An exclusive piece for the HQ blog, author Anita Frank share what inspired her to write her breath-taking new novel, The Return.
There is a moment in the BBC’s excellent adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South that, to my mind at least, captures the essence of true romance. Margaret Hale is handing John Thornton a cup of tea, and the camera lingers on their brushing fingers as the saucer passes between them. So much is communicated in that subtle exchange, and it is this subtlety, where quiet actions speak louder than words, that I personally adore in love stories, and it’s what I’ve tried to create in my latest novel The Return.
The Return is a love story set around the Second World War. As Jack prepares to leave for the army in 1939, he makes a solemn vow to his pregnant wife Gwen that, come what may, he will not return. So when the bells ring out for Victory in Europe in May 1945, Gwen, who has been running the family farm, wonders if her life is about to change – and she’s right to do so, for as the war draws to a close, Jack realises he can no longer keep the promise he so faithfully made all those years ago, and he is coming home, determined to try and win a place in Gwen’s life and her heart. But as the events of the past come back to haunt them, threatening all they hold dear, they find themselves facing their greatest battle yet, and their only hope of success is to stand together and fight as one.
The Return is a quiet story of love, loyalty, and devotion. It reflects the difficult choices we must often face in life, and the realisation that we don’t always make the best decisions. It is also a story of second chances and of never giving up.
But there is another love story written within the pages of The Return, a deeply personal one. The dilemmas that Jack and Gwen must tackle play out against the backdrop of a working farm. I am very proud to be a farmer’s daughter from Shropshire, and a love of the countryside runs deep in my veins. I grew up listening to my parents talk about their experiences on the land as children: my grandma milking the cows by hand; my granny slicing bacon off the cured pig carcass hanging in the cool store; my dad, as a boy, catching rabbits left stunned but unscathed by the reaper-binder passing over them; and my mum churning butter after school and raking hay in the fields.
Farming has, of course, become vastly modernised over the years – my own childhood memories are those of the combine harvester and the broad booms of an industrial-sized sprayer – but my dad, who was born just before the war, was able to offer me huge insight into what farming was like in that bygone age, and I’ve done my best to accurately represent daily life on a farm back then and the sheer hard graft needed to work the land. Indeed, my dad proved to be an invaluable fount of knowledge. It’s all very well reading about potato riddles and threshing machines, seed drills and Fordson tractors, but I gained a whole new appreciation of this equipment when my dad and I visited the Museum of English Rural Life in Reading, where I now live. Once there, he took me through the mechanics of each machine and shared his memories about the gritty realities of using them. I was then able to incorporate some of that detail into my writing, hopefully bringing scenes to life. I want my readers to be able to see Gwen’s farm in their mind’s eye, and I hope my descriptions will successfully conjure this lost country life.
My dad wasn’t my only research resource, of course! British Pathé films of wartime farming (available on YouTube) were fascinating to watch. I also read a lot of Land Girl memoirs and found They Fought in the Fields by Nicola Tyrer and Land Girls by Joan Mant especially helpful. It is perhaps of no surprise that I also enjoy reading novels with a rural, pre-war setting. I heartily recommend All Among the Barley by Melissa Harrison, and recently I’ve read The Horseman by Tim Pears, the gentle, lyrically-written opening novel to his West Country Trilogy – I’m very much looking forward to reading the rest of the series.
They always say you should write the novel that you want to read, and for me, that sums up The Return. All I can hope is that you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it and that you might come to love Jack and Gwen as much as I do.
The Return is out now in eBook and paperback.
