Kirjahaku

When Zara Keff is evacuated from London to Cambridgeshire in 1940, her extended family goes along too. A model pupil, Zara relishes being in the thick of the local war effort, winning her school a prize for her tireless efforts on the home front. When tales of the suffering inflicted in occupied Europe begin to emerge, she is as horrified as any of her classmates. That horror is compounded by a shocking chance discovery, for Zara is not quite who she thinks she is. A tender, thought-provoking book about love, lies, and identity, it weaves the complex tale of the century itself through the lifetime of Zara Keff.

When the Second World War broke out, Miss Daisy Baker of Kingsbury County School reached out to every former scholar serving their country. Two hundred Old Kingsburians replied, sending five hundred letters between them. Those letters survive – and they are the subject of this book. To read the Letters to Miss Baker is to follow those former scholars as they trained, travelled, camped, fought, were imprisoned and died in the struggle to save democracy. They may have expected to spend their working lives in London or its environs and might never have travelled abroad. Yet, from 1939 to 1945, they found themselves bumping into each other in the most unlikely of places; fighting in brutal, historic battles, whether on the western front, in the deserts of North Africa or amid the melee of Italy; flying missions to bring destruction upon the enemy, the odds stacked against them, flailing frantically to free themselves from blazing planes; guarding the high seas, shelled, going down with their ship; huddled in secret, decoding messages, providing vital intelligence to the Forces; even ferrying a Prime Minister around. Letters to Miss Baker is a tribute to those Old Kingsburians and to their remarkable teacher.