A Boston family opens up their home to an 11-year-old British girl, during the WWII bombing raids in England. Beatrix Thompson slowly becomes Bea to the Gregory family; they grow to love her, and she comes to love them with a fierceness that remains with her for the rest of her life. Before long, the Gregorys feel more like her family than her own. She lives with them for over five years, and abruptly has to go back to England at War’s end, a place she no longer feels is her own. Time moves on, and she re-enters her English life, but there is a far-away pull she cannot ignore. This is the story of a woman attempting to exist in two worlds. This is a moving story that ends as beautifully as it is written. I would recommend to fans of Brooklyn by Colm Toibin and Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
Beyond That, the Sea by Laura Spence-Ash
As German bombs fall over London in 1940, Millie and Reginald Thompson send their eleven-year-old daughter, Beatrix, to America for the duration of the war. The Gregorys fold Bea seamlessly into their world. She becomes part of this lively family, learning their ways and adjusting to their affluent lifestyle. Before long, life with the Gregorys feels more natural to her than the quiet, spare life with her own parents back in England. The girl she had been begins to fade away, until she is called home to London when the war ends. As she returns to post-war London, the memory of her American family stays with her as she tries to move on and pursue a life of her own,