See you soon Caroline!
David Birmingham reviews a novel that reveals Quaker efforts to relieve unbelievable suffering in the 1939-1942 concentration camps in southern France
During the first two years of the second world war America was a neutral country and American Quakers, unlike British ones, were able to conduct relief work in mainland Europe. A glimpse into the records has enabled Bernard Wilson, a Canterbury Friend, to write a young person’s novel about how a family fared when occupation, racism, internment, death and the issue of refugees hit southern France. In See you soon Caroline! the romantic dimension in the novel – for intended young readers – is wrapped up in historical insights, which can seriously grip those who lived through the very dark year of 1940.
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