Blitz - Hardcover

Lefebure is a biographer and children's book author; this is her first adult novel. In a moving account of the intertwined lives of four families during the London blitz, Lefebure conveys not only the destruction of a city but the courage of its inhabitants. She re-creates a society out of joint, in which suffering and sudden death are commonplace. The resilience of the English in the face of the relentless Nazi attack shines through the story. Love affairs are hurriedly begun and brutally ended. Survivors band together to create new societies in air-raid shelters. Lefebure even demonstrates a sense of humor by including such absurd situations as the efforts of the Infants' Bible Class to collect funds for hand grenades. Her compelling narrative immerses readers in a not-so-distant past of trial and triumph.
- Kathy Piehl, Mankato State Univ., Minn.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The blitzkreig by German bombers that devastated London in 1940 is the unifying agent in this first adult novel from a writer of children's books and a biographer of Coleridge. The spirited narrative follows four families--whose backgrounds run the gamut from stiff-lipped upper class to raunchy working poor--in their often intertwined reactions to the changes brought about by the death that rained from the skies, destroying property and lives. Chiefly through the stories of young women saddled with childhood nicknames of Jampot, Thingy and Boggy, we learn of courage in facing loss of friends, family and lovers. Lefebure conveys vividly the tumultuous, chaotic scrambling for survival that mobilized London under siege, much of the accuracy of her portrayal obviously stemming from her experiences as a newspaper reporter in East London during the blitz.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.