Thunder in the Sky Molly Lefebure 9780751552720

Their country needed them

In the summer of 1942, Lorna Washbourne must say goodbye to her beloved home in the peaceful East Anglian countryside, which is about to be demolished to make way for the US Eighth Army Air Force and its new airfield.

War brings with it great change and Lorna and her friends find themselves called up to serve. Violetta is in the army while Megan and Bunty are sent to London: Megan, in the American Red Cross; Bunty, a clippie on the London buses. Lorna, with the most reason to want to leave behind the memories of her lost home, is conscripted to work there. Before long, she is drawn into the life of the airfield and its crews who fly their perilous bombing missions in preparation for D-Day . . .

Set against the dark days of World War II, Thunder in the Sky is a vivid portrayal of four women and their war-torn lives and loves.

Molly Lefebure started her writing career as a newspaper reporter in East London during the Blitz. She then worked for many years as the private secretary to acclaimed forensic pathologist Dr Keith Simpson, head of the Department of Forensic Medicine at Guy's Hospital. She is the author of several children's books and a memoir of her time working with Dr Simpson, Murder on the Home Front, which has been adapted for television. She was a Coleridge scholar and wrote two acclaimed books on the poet, and she was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2010.

Her two novels for adults, Blitz! and Thunder in the Sky, are sweeping historical sagas and they are closely based on her own experiences during the Second World War. Molly sadly passed away in 2013 but her memory lives on through her writing.