WE MUST BE BRAVE by Frances Liardet

When a book moves you to cry you gotta give it 4+ stars. Te power of words to make pictures, tell a story, touch a heart is really quite amazing, such a skill to tap into an imagination to conjure emotion. There is so much sadness in this story, but also hope and so much love.

It is actually quite a simple plot line but the intensity of emotion and relationships create a very powerful story with challenges and complications. It all begins in 1940, Britain is being bombed to bits. One night buses bring residents fleeing the bombing in Southampton to a small village, where the locals take them in. Ellen Parr, a young woman married to the older Selwyn, finds a four year old girl alone on the bus, left behind, abandoned  - who knows. No one claims her, so Pamela becomes the daughter that Ellen and Selwyn do not have. Some years later, Pamela's father turns up and takes Pamela to Ireland to live with relatives there. We can only imagine the torment, despair and grief that Selwyn and particularly Ellen go through, in fact the whole village really. Ellen carries the grief for the rest of her days, and like any form of grieving it never goes away, you just learn to live with it. More years pass, and another little girl inches her way into Ellen's heart, opening up that wound brought on by Pamela. What will happen this time?

Such a beautifully told story of a mother's love for a child, even if that child is not biologically yours. All mothers must be brave, as at some time our children will leave us - we just have to hope that we have given them the tools to be brave and strong themselves in their own lives.