Home Fires
A stunning, delicate portrait of a family bookended by war, Home Fires explores the legacy of loss, the strictures of class and the long road to redemption.
Max Weston, twenty-one, leaves for his first army posting in central Africa. What happens to him changes the lives of his family forever.
At home, his parents struggle to cope. The overwhelming love Caroline has always felt for her only child is now matched by the intensity of Max's absence.
The silence is broken by the arrival of Caroline's mother-in-law, Elsa, who at the age of ninety-eight can no longer look after herself.
After years of living in fear of putting a foot wrong in front of this elegant, cuttingly courteous lady, finally, Caroline has the upper hand.
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‘Elizabeth Day writes with unflinching, responsible honesty; I was inspired and enlightened by the deep humanity of Home Fires’
Sadie Jones
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'Day has created a compelling study of grief, not least the conflicting ways in which the bereaved may wish to remember the dead … A bold novel, shocking in what it confronts and also in its suggestion that love will, ultimately, survive trauma'
The Daily Telegraph