Home to the Hills by Dee Yates
Genre: Historical fiction, Sagas, WW2
Read: 4th July 2020
Purchase: Amazon
(publication date: 19th March 2020)
★★★★★ 5 stars
I love historical fiction, particularly sagas with characters you have come to know and love, and upon discovering that this was a sequel to "A Last Goodbye" I set out to read that before diving into this one. Like the one before it, once I started HOME TO THE HILLS I found that I could not put it down. I was immediately immersed within the story that takes place some thirty years after "A Last Goodbye" finishes.
HOME TO THE HILLS is a tender touching post-war saga which sees Ellen returning to the hills of Scotland with her now adult daughter Netta. It will touch your heart and bring a tear or two to the eye with a story that remain with you long after it has ended.
April 1939: A distraught young girl is comforted by a kind lady who reminds the boy of his own mother as they board the train that will take them to their destination. The kind lady gently persuades the young girl to sit beside him as he looks to be "such a sensible boy". The girl continues to sob throughout the journey, settling into a sulky silence. They seemed to travel for days, by train and by boat and by train again, by the time they reach their final destination. Disembarking he looks around eagerly, awaiting to be shown the place where he will be staying and await for his parents to join him. The young girl who had travelled with him was quieter now, confiding how much she missed her parents. He squeezed her hand and said likewise, ensuring that they would see them again soon.
December, 1945: With the second world war now over, Ellen Kessler and Netta Fairclough step off the Glasgow train in the small Lanark village as they return to the southern uplands of Scotland. It has been nearly thirty years since they were last here and their return sparks a mountain of memories for Ellen, who grew up on the farm where Netta was also born.
Their return is bittersweet as they soon discover that Ellen's beloved father passed away three years before and his wife Margaret has taken up residence in a small railway cottage in the village. However, the farmer Kenneth Douglas and his wife Elizabeth are still there and welcome them both with open arms.
But Ellen is not the same woman she was who left at the end of the Great War to join the love of her life Josef Kessler in his native Germany with her daughters Netta and Eva. She has seen such cruelty she had never known before, not even at the hands of her first husband Tom, and a despair that has changed her life dramatically. Netta is very protective of her mother as they are all each other has left after suffering the atrocities of war and the losses that they have endured. They have returned to Scotland to heal but Ellen finds the farm hold many memories of her life before and of when she first met a young Josef as a prisoner of war there.
Ellen and Netta settle into a quiet life on the farm, living in a nearby cottage by the new reservoir. Ellen helps Elizabeth in the kitchen while Netta tries her hand at shepherding under the well-trained eye of newcomer Andrew Cameron. Not afraid of hardwork, Netta walks the rugged hills of the farm alongside Andrew, learning all aspects of lambing, clipping and preparing ewes for market. Even in the midst of the harshest winter, she helps to dig the buried ewes from the snow before they suffocate. While Netta is proving to be an asset to the farm not all locals welcome her. Farming is men's work and a woman's place is in the farmhouse kitchen. But when it's discovered she has grown up in Germany, tensions rise even higher. Some folk have long memories and bear no sympathy for those who are German.
And yet Ellen is determined to make this a fresh start for her daughter, despite all they have loved and lost. But there are some secrets that are just too painful to share which she has kept close to her heart for years...
As the story unfolds, we are given a glimpse into the past in Germany and another minor plot that is also unfolding at the beginning of the war in Manchester through to the end of the war in Yorkshire, adding a depth that enriches the story. Both stories are cleverly woven together by the end that will bring tears to your eyes at its heartwarming conclusion.
When I started HOME TO THE HILLS, I found Ellen to be a virtual stranger to the forthright young woman she was in the first book. As Netta was just a toddler at the time she didn't have time to develop a personality in the story, but at the beginning of this one I found both women to be a little standoffish and I wondered whether I was going to enjoy this book as much as I had the first. However, as the story unfolds, the reader soon learns why the two women are the way they are and we come to love them wholly by the story's end.
This immersive tale of second chances, after such sadness and loss in the face of war, HOME TO THE HILLS will tug at the heartstrings and sweep readers back in time to post-war rural Scotland. It is captivating and compelling and completely addictive from beginning to end, just as much as "A Last Goodbye".
Although HOME TO THE HILLS is actually a sequel to "A Last Goodbye", readers will be able to enjoy this book without having read the first one with ease, as there is enough information given to allow this book to be read as a standalone. However, the first really is too good to miss out on so I do recommend reading "A Last Goodbye" before this one to enjoy the story even more.
Should there be a follow up to this story? I think it is nicely wrapped up as it is. A definite recommend for lovers of historical fiction, particularly sagas.
I would like to thank #DeeYates, #NetGalley and #AriaFiction and #HeadOfZeus for an ARC of #HomeToTheHills in exchange for an honest review.
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