Showing results for "World of War" in Animals

Belfast, October 1940. Twenty-year-old zookeeper Hettie Quin arrives at the city docks in time to meet her new charge: an orphaned three-year-old Indian elephant named Violet. As Violet adjusts to her new solitary life in captivity and Hettie mourns the recent loss of her sister and the abandonment of her father, new storm clouds gather. A world war rages, threatening a city already reeling from escalating tensions between British Loyalists and those fighting for a free and unified Ireland.

By April 1916, the fervour that accompanied war’s outbreak has faded. In its place is a grim reality. Throughout Germany, essentials are rationed. Hope, too, is in short supply. Anna Zeller, whose fiancé, Bruno, is fighting on the Western Front, works as a nurse at an overcrowded hospital in Oldenburg, trying to comfort men broken in body and spirit. But during a visit from Dr Stalling, the director of the Red Cross Ambulance Dogs Association, she witnesses a rare spark of optimism.

It is September 1940, and as German bombs fall on Britain, fears grow of an impending invasion. Enemy fighter planes blacken the sky around Epping Forest, the home of Susan Shepherd and her grandfather, Bertie. After losing her parents as a child, Susan found comfort in raising homing pigeons. Duchess has proven to be the most extraordinary of all Susan's birds, as the two share a special bond and an unusual curiosity about the world. Thousands of miles away in Buxton, Maine, a young crop-duster pilot named Ollie Evans has decided to travel to Britain to join the Royal Air Force.