Chapters (57)
- Cover
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Forty-three
- Forty-four
- Forty-five
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- POPULAR BOOKS FROM THE ERA
- When We Meet Again
- A Conversation with Caroline Beecham about When We Meet Again
- Discussion Guide
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- What’s next onyour reading list?
My love and thanks to Tina Cook, Lisa Blacklaw-Taylor, Jacqueline Beecham and John Lydon for reading early drafts of the manuscript and for their valued feedback. A final thank-you to my glorious grandmother Ellen Mary Taylor, who passed away on November 30, 2019, at the age of ninety-eight. She was an inspiration for my writing and the keeper of our family secrets, and will be dearly missed.
POPULAR BOOKS FROM THE ERA
Some of the most popular books of 1942–1943 in the UK and US, according to The New York Times and The Bookseller, include:
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith, Harper & Brothers, 1943
The Provincial Lady in War-Time, E. M. Delafield, Macmillan, 1940
The Battle of Britain, Ministry of Information, 1941
Bomber Command, Ministry of Information, 1941
Coastal Command, Ministry of Information, 1942
Five Little Pigs, Agatha Christie, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1942
Five on a Treasure Island, Enid Blyton, Hodder & Stoughton, 1942
Frenchman’s Creek, Daphne du Maurier, Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1941
No Orchids for Miss Blandish, James Hadley Chase, Jarrolds, 1939
The Ministry of Fear, Graham Greene, Heinemann, 1943
Mrs. Parkington, Louis Bromfield, Harper & Brothers, 1943
Put Out More Flags, Evelyn Waugh, Chapman & Hall, 1942
The Body in the Library, Agatha Christie, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1942
The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis, Geoffrey Bles, 1942
The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus, Éditions Gallimard, 1942
The Song of Bernadette, Franz Werfel, Hamish Hamilton, 1942
The Robe, Lloyd C. Douglas, Houghton Mifflin, 1942
West with the Night, Beryl Markham, Houghton Mifflin, 1942
The Moon Is Down, John Steinbeck, Viking Press, 1942
The Scarlet Imposter, Dennis Wheatley, Hutchinson, 1940
When We Meet Again
Caroline Beecham
A Conversation with Caroline Beecham
Discussion Guide
A Conversation with Caroline Beecham about When We Meet Again
What is your novel about?
When We Meet Again is the story of a young woman, Alice Cotton, who shows extraordinary courage and determination when she cleverly combines her search for her missing child with the challenge of creating much-needed books during wartime. The novel starts when her baby, Eadie, is stolen and Alice’s search takes her into the dark and frightening world of baby farming in the 1940s. (Baby farmers were people, often couples, who took infants and children for a fee under the pretext of looking after them but in most cases did the opposite.)
Though a tense and moving story, there’s also a lot of light in the book, which comes from the fascinating world of book publishing during the Second World War. Alice works as an editor at Partridge Press, where they are struggling to keep up with the demand for books with ever-increasing paper rations. Everyone is reading more; in the shelters, in their blacked-out homes—for entertainment and escapism—and more books are also needed for the troops and servicemen. When We Meet Again is a story of love and hope, about the importance of friendship, of loyalty and forgiveness—and the belief that books have the power to change lives.
Discuss your inspirations for the novel. Were there any personal experiences that drew you to this plot?