For close to 15 years, I have read at least 30 novels by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, all of which have transported me to a variety of interesting places and times, as well as introducing me to many colorful, endearing, and intriguing people.

"PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES: War at Home, 1919" is the final novel in the War at Home Series, which has been a delight to read. It begins in December 1918, a few weeks after the Armistice. Captain Sir Edward Hunter, the patriarch of the Hunter family, has survived the hazards of war and is anxious for a reconciliation with his wife, Beattie, whose heart had been captured by an old love from her youth who had died from wounds he received from combat about a year earlier, leaving her heartbroken and emotionally distant from her husband. But before the reconciliation could take place, Edward is asked to take on an important role at the upcoming Paris Peace Conference. Thus for most of 1919, Edward is mainly in Paris. Beattie manages to make a visit and both she and Edward begin the tentative process of reconciliation. I won't say much more than that.

The Hunter family and Edward's sister Laura (an adventurous woman who had spent the previous couple of years at the Front as an ambulance driver and the proprietress of a rest home and recreation center for soldiers in Flanders not far from the lines) experience various ups and downs in 1919 --- as do several of the servants who had long been in service to the Hunters at The Elms in Northcote. Now that the war is over, readjusting to peacetime in Britain proves to be easier said than done.

What I loved most about reading "PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES" is that I never wanted to stop reading. Everything about it seemed so tangible, so real. I felt that Sir Edward, Beattie, their children, the family dog Nailer -- and the servants Cook, Ada, and Ethel (along with Munt the cantankerous gardener and Frank Hussey, who had bared his heart to Ethel some years ago and remained determined to woo and marry her) were so vividly alive!!! And now that I've finished the War at Home Series, what I have experienced from it, I know, will stay with me always. Give or take 3 or 5 years, and I wouldn't be averse to re-reading all 6 novels thereof.

I finished reading "TILL THE BOYS COME HOME" several minutes ago. Reading it was like riding at times a boat down white water rapids. There would be moments of calm, and then -- WHOOM! tragedy and devastating sadness.

The novel carries the reader across the length and breadth of the year 1918. A year that started uncertain for Britain and many of the novel's main characters. The expectation was that Germany would launch a great offensive in the spring - now that Russia had withdrawn from the war, thus freeing up for Berlin several infantry divisions it could deploy on the Western Front against the British and French - and crush the Allies in a series of attacks before the Americans could enter in appreciable numbers to affect the outcome of the war. All the while, there is this war weariness that permeates every aspect of life both at the Front and in Britain, which is reflected in the Hunter family and their servants. There were a lot of ups and downs, as well as twists and turns in the story that caught me unawares. And -- along with Cynthia Harrod-Eagles' skill in making her characters come alive --- I was captivated with this novel. I simply had to know how everything would turn out. Now I need to catch my breath before reading Novel # 6 in the series.

The novel begins on Christmas Day, 1916 and then quickly progresses into 1917. The war for the Hunter Family and its servants, as well as for Britain, has become all-consuming. No-one, not a corner of the country has been left untouched by the war's effects, both direct and indirect. Starvation looms as a distinct possibility in Britain as Germany's campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare (resumed in February) threatens to put a firm stranglehold on it, and cut the country off from its vital sea lanes that keep the nation supplied with the essential foodstuffs and materials with which to continue the fight. 

As for the Hunters, Diana the eldest daughter married to the sly, witty and irrepressible dandy Rupert (Lord Dene) is now with child. David, the eldest, is home permanently from France, where he sustained a serious wound to his leg (which he came close to losing) and is in a deep funk. He has been invalided from the Army and is at loss as to what the future might hold for him. Sadie, the other daughter, continues to work at Highclere, helped to break-in and train horses for the Army. The other 2 children in the family (William, 17, and Peter, 11) are also, in their respective ways, changing because of the war. 

There is so much more I would love to say. But that would be giving away much too much of what is a gripping, emotional roller-coaster ride of a novel. I became fully invested in the lives of many of its characters, several of whom suffer tragedy and heartache -- as well as love.

I've been a fan of Cynthia Harrod-Eagles as a writer for close to 15 years. She never disappoints. And now that I've finished reading "THE LONG, LONG TRAIL, 1917", I'm going to take a short break before plunging into the next novel in the series. 

Reading this, the fourth novel in the 'War at Home' series, has given me a keener appreciation of how the First World War impacted every strata of British society, not just those who served on active service on the various fighting fronts.

One of the hallmarks from reading a Cynthia Harrod-Eagles novel is that you will never be indifferent to the lives of the characters therein. And so it is with "THE LAND OF MY DREAMS", the third novel in the 'War at Home' Series. 

It is now 1916. The First World War for civilians and combatants alike in Britain has taken on the attributes of an irresistible tide, altering everything in its path. In the Hunter family, 2 sons are now on active service. David, the eldest and his mother's favorite, is an infantry officer who has already received his baptism of fire in the failed Battle of Loos of the previous year. Bobby, who had followed his brother into the Army, developed a love for aviation and was able to wrangle a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) whilst still in Britain. Bobby takes to the rigors of ground school and the rather haphazard flight training scheme then in effect in the RFC with nary a misstep. With the advent of spring, he earns his wings and is assigned to a frontline unit in France where he becomes a skilled scout pilot, flying the nimble Airco DH.2 single-seat biplane 'pusher' aircraft on various offensive patrols and escort missions over the lines. By mid-year, the Battle of the Somme would commence, a cataclysmic struggle that would sorely test the resolve of both the British forces at the Front and their families at home. 

In the meantime, the rest of the Hunter family is caught up in the pressures and changes the war has already wrought on the world around them. Beattie, the matriarch of the Hunter family, while busily engaged in an expanding number of charitable activities related to the war, has a chance encounter with someone from her past which could have consequences on her marital relationship. Diana (the eldest daughter) unexpectedly finds 'love' - if one can truly it that - from an unexpected corner. I won't say more on that score. For the reader of this review whose curiosity about this novel has been whetted, I will leave it to him or her to take up "THE LAND OF MY DREAMS" and discover how the third year of war impacts on the Hunters, some relatives thereof, and some of the servants in the Hunter household

"KEEP THE HOME FIRES BURNING" takes up where "GOODBYE PICCADILLY" left off. It is now 1915. For both the Wroughton and Hunter families in Northcote, the war is beginning to take on a grimness that is beginning to make itself felt throughout Britain. Charles Wroughton, the eldest son and inheritor of the family estate, has been an officer in the Territorials, training his men for the time when they will be sent to France to assume their place at the Front. He and his fiancée, Diana Hunter, have grown more in love and plans are made for a spring wedding. The Hunter family is going through wrenching changes of its own with 2 of the older sons joining the military. Diana's younger sister, Sadie, now approaching 17, is very much a tomboy with a deep love for horses and the countryside. Before the year is out, she would have a job helping to train horses for service with the army in France and become more wiser in the ways of life through charitable war work in the community.

At the same time, the lives of the servants in the Hunter's employ are also undergoing changes paralleling what is reflected in the rest of the nation. Nowhere is this more evident than in the observations made by the Hunter's chef, a proud lady known as 'Cook' by the family. At Christmas, Cook muses to herself that "[e]verything was changing, and she didn't like it. She and Ada [the chief parlour maid] had been together for over twenty years, and their lives had not been altered in that time, bar the move from London to Northcote. Life was like that, before the war. Nothing ever happened, nothing ever changed, you knew where you were, and you knew where you would be next year.

"And your life would have been instantly recognisable to your mother, your grandmother, your great-grandmother. There was a magnificent solidness to the world - by which she meant England; a dignity, a worth. If a thing was right, it was right - why would you ever change it?

"But now, just in one year, everything was as different as could be. Young men went off to war and got killed. People got blown up in their own streets, in their own beds [thanks to the Zeppelins] ... Routines couldn't be relied on. There were strangers everywhere you looked. And women in particular were doing things you could never have imagined. ... Everything was upside down, everyone was out of their place, nothing could be depended on.

"And now Ada - Ada of all people! - wanting to walk out with a man [a soldier] she hardly knew. She and Ada had been like two halves of a walnut. What would happen to her, Cook, if Ada changed? What if she went away? Why can't things be the way they were? She threw the impassioned plea to Heaven. I hate change. I hate it!"

I loved this novel, being able to experience, in ways big and small, the changes all the characters went through in the course of one full year of war. One of the things I love about reading a Cynthia Harrod-Eagles book is how she can bring vividly to life any character that graces the pages of her novel. I developed strong feelings - pro and con - about these characters. I became intensely curious to see how they would fare, which was enough to make me stay with "KEEP THE HOME FIRES BURNING" to the final page. Now I'll catch my breath before going on to read the third novel in the series.