'I think this dichotomy-between the desire for home and the urge to leave-is of central interest to my life and my writing,' she has said. Yet she has always carried with her a deep longing for home.

area.Īs a young woman, Simonson was eager to head to London for college and, later, to move across the pond to America. Simonson considers it her ideal of home.īut over the past three decades Simonson has lived in the U.S.-first, as a long-time and proud resident of Brooklyn, New York, and more recently in the Washington D.C.

Rye is situated in East Sussex, a county of medieval villages, seaside towns, and high grassy bluffs known as the South Downs. The town is now surrounded by marshland, the very place Charles Dickens' Pip, from Great Expectations, started off on his jouney to manhood. She grew up near Rye, a 14th century smuggling port from which the sea receded long ago. Though living in America, Simonson was born and raised in England. Helen Simonson is the author of two novels, The Last Stand of Major Pettigrew (2010) and The Summer Before the War (2016). Education-London School of Economics M.F.A., State University of New York,.Soon the limits of progress, and the old ways, will be tested as this small Sussex town and its inhabitants go to war. ( From the publisher.) For her part, mourning the death of her beloved father, who has left her penniless, Beatrice simply wants to be left alone to pursue her teaching and writing.īut just as Beatrice comes alive to the beauty of the Sussex landscape and the colorful characters who populate Rye, the perfect summer is about to end.įor despite Agatha’s reassurances, the unimaginable is coming. When Beatrice Nash arrives with one trunk and several large crates of books, it is clear she is significantly more freethinking-and attractive-than anyone believes a Latin teacher should be.

Agatha’s husband works in the Foreign Office, and she is certain he will ensure that the recent saber rattling over the Balkans won’t come to anything.Īnd Agatha has more immediate concerns she has just risked her carefully built reputation by pushing for the appointment of a woman to replace the Latin master. Hugh Grange, down from his medical studies, is visiting his Aunt Agatha, who lives with her husband in the small, idyllic coastal town of Rye. It is the end of England’s brief Edwardian summer, and everyone agrees that the weather has never been so beautiful. The bestselling author of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand returns with a breathtaking novel of love on the eve of World War I that reaches far beyond the small English town in which it is set.Įast Sussex, 1914.

The summer before the war