Rhys Bowen’s newest stand-alone, The Victory Garden, brings the horrors of WWI close to home with its young protagonist, Emily Bryce.

The judge’s daughter, with a mother who is class conscious, has lost her beloved brother to the war. When she meets an Australian pilot convalescing at a local home, they fall in love, only to have that love thwarted by more than her parents.

Determined to make a difference, like her nurse friend Clarissa has done, Emily joins the Women’s Land Army, to her parents chagrin. Learning things that will come in useful brings Emily and a few of her cohorts to the small village of Bucksley Cross to work the garden of Lady Charlton, a widow who has lost her son and grandson to the war.

An unlikely friendship breaks out between the older woman and the educated girl, and when things change dramatically for Emily, she returns to the small, dark cottage Lady Charlton owns, where the journal of another young woman soon finds Emily concocting herbal potions that will do more than she could ever have imagined for the village and for herself.

With a hearty dose of self-determination, Emily finds a new family of unlikely friends at the same time that she finds her own strength.

Bowen encapulates the huge horrors of war by bringing them to the heartache of one young woman on a voyage of self-discovery. A satifying read from a talented writer at the top of her game.