Some Lucky Day
In 1942, 21-year-old Kitty Pargeter is serving with the Air Transport Auxiliary. She and her best friend, Charlotte, are two of the rare female pilots entrusted with delivering planes for the RAF across war-torn Britain. Faced with the consequences of a disastrous accident, Kitty confronts a painful struggle to rebuild her life. Her worries increase when her brother Freddy, also a pilot, is shot down over enemy lines. Moving into the Beach View boarding house, Kitty’s recuperation is assisted by the kind-hearted landlady, Peggy, and a houseful of assorted lodgers who have been billeted there. As Kitty recovers, she is impatient to resume her flying career, but a blossoming romance with a handsome RAF officer raises her spirits.
This is Ellie Dean’s seventh novel, which returns to the small town of Cliffehaven on the south coast. She has created likeable characters in both Kitty and Peggy, and the narrative is most compelling when it focuses on them, rather than on the large cast of minor players. Descriptions of the ATA, as well as of Kitty’s rehabilitation after her life-changing injury, are clearly well-researched. Daily hardships, such as rationing, air raids and separation from family, are depicted in detail, as well as the heartbreak suffered by loss of homes and loved ones. This is an easy to read novel, which provides an entertaining flavour of life on the Home Front during the Second World War.
