A WORLD WAR 2 NOVEL

In the closing months of 1943, the Americans were arriving in the South Hams of Devon, England, to begin military rehearsals ahead of the Normandy Invasion in June 44’. It was a huge operation by any standards, but along the rural coastline of Slapton Sands, it brought a major clash of sensitivities with the people and the land.

The Fields of Thyme is about a young and socially unsuccessful farm boy, Tom Skinner, to whom only one thing really matters; the safety and survival of a butterfly habitat which is home to the Large Blue species. With the bedding in of the military over a large area of countryside, the habitat becomes locked within an Exclusion Zone; into which it becomes foolhardy and extremely dangerous for unauthorised people to enter. However, this will not stop the local lad, with local knowledge and native skills, from trespassing and plotting to disrupt the occupation; in which cause he’s joined by Charlotte Kingsley, a pretty young lass, whose parents own a local pub in East Prawle. There are several other key and interesting characters who help shape the story, and none more so than a young coloured GI, Leroy Grant, whose arrival brings added and huge complications; some of which are not very difficult to anticipate!

If you’d care to reflect on the hymn, ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’, you’ll be well placed to consider the catalogue of emotions which travel through this narrative, including from dark to optimistic, spiritual to hellish, real to surreal, poignant to cruel; hilarious to tragic; until the story careers into the realms of believable insanity. Not withstanding all of this, you might still conclude to wonder, if the events you joined with, might just have happened; or actually did.