We Must Be Brave

Spanning the sweep of the twentieth century, We Must Be Brave explores the fierce love that we feel for our children and the power of that love to endure. Beyond distance, beyond time, beyond life itself.

One woman. One little girl. The war that changed everything.

December 1940. In the disorderly evacuation of Southampton, England, newly married Ellen Parr finds a small child asleep on the backseat of an empty bus. No one knows who little Pamela is.

Ellen professed not to want children with her older husband, and when she takes Pamela into her home and rapidly into her heart, she discovers that this is true: Ellen doesn't want children. She wants only Pamela. Three golden years pass as the Second World War rages on. Then one day Pamela is taken away, screaming. Ellen is no stranger to sorrow, but when she returns to the quiet village life she's long lived, she finds herself asking: In a world changed by war, is it fair to wish for an unchanged heart?

In the spirit of We Were the Lucky Ones and The Nightingale, here is a novel about courage and kindness, hardship and friendship, and the astonishing power of love.

FRANCES LIARDET has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and studied Arabic at Oxford before traveling to Cairo, where she translated modern Egyptian novelists including Nobel-prize winner Naguib Mahfouz and Edwar al-Kharrat. She currently lives in Somerset, England, and runs a summer writing session called Bootcamp, where local writers get together to share work and constructive criticism. Her first novel, The Game, won a Betty Trask Award.