Dawn Knox’s A Folly in Plotlands

 

A heart-warming story of romance and survival.

Dismissed from a school where she was neve really that happy but that had been home for her for a long time, Samira Stewart cultivates an unlikely relationship with her estranged grandmother. She has to grow up quickly. She takes care of the ailing old lady who doesn’t deserve the attention that is now lavished on her. Then her brother and uncle really start to make life difficult. She falls in love and a childhood illness almost stops her beloved from staying with her.

Expert story-teller Dawn Knox’s A Folly in Plotland is an uplifting read.  Enjoy!                   

Fearless Heart by Dawn Knox

 

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Although this is a feel good romance with an upbeat ending the story shows a lot of evidence of careful research by the writer. This is another novel that shows women playing a very active role in war time activities. Here we have details of:

SOE (Special Operations Executive)

The Resistance

How undercover workers were got into and out of France

How people reported in

How the BBC helped convey “personal” messages

What life was like for French civilians?

How the occupying forces operated

The type of war work women could do  

Hunger and deprivation

It is also extremely well written. 

Genevieve has to learn to behave as a man in occupied France. Yves is at first very wary of her. She falls in love with him.  But will her love be requited. Will they both survive?

Knox engages us from the beginning and keeps our attention through her carefully drawn characters about whom we care about a lot.   

 

The Great War by Dawn Knox

This little volume contains one hundred stories, each told in exactly one hundred words, written one hundred years after they might have taken place.
 

They are naturally of great interest to me as I am also writing in this era. Although my own historical work is set mainly in the 1940s and World War II, much of my work has connections with that time.

The one hundred word story requires some delicate craft. The whole story arc must be contained there, and arguably there should be a three act structure as well. Dawn Knox manages this demanding task very well.

She has clearly invested in a great deal of research and sustains the variety. There are some really heart-breaking stories such of that of the young man facing a firing squad and another one about the young men who make up that firing squad. One young man, who has been sent back to Blighty because of a hand injury, is constantly accosted by the young women of the White Flower Movement. There are lighter-hearted stories too: the young man who grumbles because his parcel from home is constantly delivered to another man with same name, the man who survives but misses his pals after the war, the Land Girl who appreciates working in the fresh air instead of in a munitions factory.

This great little book looks at so many different aspects of the Great War. The short extracts make it very easy to digest and always tell a very human story. A great resource for anyone wishing to learn about this terrible war.