Mr Evan’s elder sister, Dilys Gotobed, is a widow, confined to her bed and looked after by a woman called Hepzibah Green. The children visit Mr Evan’s elder sister’s home- Druid’s Bottom- a mysterious, secretive place, magically located in a secluded grove by the train tracks. Homelife is extremely oppressive and I think, would have been intolerable, if not for the love shown by tender hearted Auntie Lou, who is scared of her brother. An outdoor lavatory, at the end of the garden must do the job, even in cold weather. The children must creep about the house and they are not allowed to even use the upstairs bathroom during the daytime, in fear of trampling on and spoiling the carpeted staircase. Mr Evans is extremely controlling and miserly.

They arrive in a sleepy Welsh coal-mining village and are billeted to the home of a curmudgeonly Welsh shopkeeper, who lives with his spinster younger sister – Auntie Lou to the children. Life for young Carrie Willow and her younger brother Nick, undergoes an enormous upheaval when they are put upon a train in the company of a trainload of London evacuees, a group of young children in the company of their schoolteacher, towards an unknown destination in the heart of Wales, far away from the scare of sudden wartime bombing. The book is an evocative picture of life on the home front, especially the stirring account of transplantation of so many young British school children, at a very young and impressionable age.

‘Carrie’s War’ by Nina Bawden is a story about a young girl’s personal struggles, adjusting to a strange new life as an evacuee in the home of Welsh family during World War 2. Carrie’s War by Nina Bawden ‘Carrie’s War’ is the story of a young evacuee’s personal struggles

Carrie's War by Nina Bawden