Suffolk, 1924. Rob MacDonald has engaged a nurse for his family to tend to his thirteen-year-old daughter Alice. Edith Fenner, a friend of Angelina Rosselli, wrote to recommend her for the position. Angel's wish is to be independent and find peace after nursing in the Great War. The small village of Uffasham is where the Angel Inn is situated, and everyone knows everyone’s business.
We learn that Rob’s wife Lalla has left him, and while this is considered possible in modern marriages, leaving her children behind is generally thought unforgivable. Young boy Tony and his sister Alice are suspicious at first but soon settle into an understanding with the quiet, friendly Angel. The villagers include an herb wife, constantly at odds with nurses, and a man demented by his war experience.
I found that the major character in the engrossing story is actually the setting. Britain is slowly recovering from four long years of war. Men are maimed, or old. Food is grown instead of lawns and flowers. With no social welfare yet, extra produce is put towards a hot lunch for schoolchildren, who may not otherwise have eaten. Women often don’t expect to marry and find respectable work nursing, sewing, or teaching. The rural Sussex scene is far behind cities, with no indoor plumbing. Angel returns briefly to her sister Louise and her husband Jack in London, showing us Kensington. Then as now this was a posh area, but Jack works at the Bank, probably the Bank of England. Even here we see barrows and carts as well as motor cabs. I enjoyed reading all the details of life at this time. The author Sheila Newberry was a child between the wars, so some of her memories are probably added to the research.
To those accustomed to reading dramatic historical sagas or Sherlock Holmes mysteries, ANGEL’S SECRET (called ANGEL'S WISH in the UK) may feel slower and quieter. People are not always as they seem, and quite a few characters have secrets. Romance and crime certainly enter into the account, but they illuminate the interplay of characters and the richly detailed locations. I became interested in the lives of Angel, Rob, and their families, lives in which the War is ever a shadow. ANGEL’S SECRET by Sheila Newberry is a good starting point for her English women’s fiction novels.
After the death of her fiancé in the field hospitals of France, Angel becomes nurse to the MacDonald family in the small village of Uffasham.
Taking residence at the appropriately named Angel Inn, she is met by many new faces - and old ones, too. Edith, a fellow nurse from the war, while taking great interest in Angel's new life, refuses to let her forget her old one.
As Angel grows closer to her employer, Robert, Edith threatens to expose a secret that could ruin everything . . .
Can Angel ever be free to move on with her new life and her new family, or will the secrets of her past finally be revealed?
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