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Back When We Meet Again Save as PDF
Chapters (57)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. Prologue
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-one
  26. Twenty-two
  27. Twenty-three
  28. Twenty-four
  29. Twenty-five
  30. Twenty-six
  31. Twenty-seven
  32. Twenty-eight
  33. Twenty-nine
  34. Thirty
  35. Thirty-one
  36. Thirty-two
  37. Thirty-three
  38. Thirty-four
  39. Thirty-five
  40. Thirty-six
  41. Thirty-seven
  42. Thirty-eight
  43. Thirty-nine
  44. Forty
  45. Forty-one
  46. Forty-two
  47. Forty-three
  48. Forty-four
  49. Forty-five
  50. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  51. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  52. POPULAR BOOKS FROM THE ERA
  53. When We Meet Again
  54. A Conversation with Caroline Beecham about When We Meet Again
  55. Discussion Guide
  56. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  57. What’s next onyour reading list?

I think there are books that you discover at different times and sometimes you find that perfect one. As a teenager it was the brooding romances of Wuthering Heights and Tess of the D’Urbervilles, or scaring myself with Stephen King. I’ve read a range of fiction and nonfiction since but now really enjoy fiction that shows me something new as well as has compelling characters and unusual settings, like Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, Bridget Collins’s The Binding and Delia Owens’s Where the Crawdads Sing. I don’t turn to any specific books during challenging times but find that historical fiction can be so distracting and offer the world through a new lens.

As a writer, it makes a huge difference if I’m reading a book that really inspires me, and I find that reading established writers, like William Boyd, Maggie O’Farrell or Isabel Allende really helpful, as they are such accomplished storytellers with enviable vocabularies and the writing is so assured. I love British author Rachel Joyce for her wonderfully quirky characters and have enjoyed getting to know the work of American authors such as Kristin Hannah, Kate Quinn, Fiona Davis, Paula McLain and Meg Clayton White. And of course, there are exceptionally talented Australian historical fiction writers such as Natasha Lester and Kate Morton, whose books are inspiring and a joy to read!

Books are transformative; they do unite and inspire and remind us of our shared experiences. You only have to look at the millions of books groups and online clubs and sites around the world. Historical fiction in particular shows us that there are many who have gone before who have experienced harder times, and it’s important to remember that. In the same way that books were so important during wartime, many people have found the same to be true during lockdown. In wartime people read to understand, to entertain and for escapism and I think the same is true of why we’ve read so much more over the past year; and are reading still. It was fairly surreal editing the novel last year, when we were in lockdown and thinking that here was history repeating; you weren’t allowed to congregate in public places in groups of more than two hundred in wartime London, and there were similar restrictions again some seventy years later. It’s another way that historical fiction can be thought-provoking; reminding us how previous generations endured and carried on.

Many readers will be astonished to learn about the practice baby farming and its wartime prevalence. How do you think this practice fit in to societal attitudes toward motherhood at this time?