Goodbye East End: An Evacuee's Story

Promotion info

A powerful memoir of a young boy's evacuation from the East End of London during World War 2.

Description

At the start of World War 2, when Hitler's bombs threatened to rain down hell, eight-year-old David Merron was taken from the heart of his close-knit Jewish community in London's East End and evacuated to the safety of the English countryside. Transplanted into an alien world, adrift from his nurturing family and at the mercy of strangers, life was frightening and lonely. The strangeness of this new existence - its religious and cultural shifts - left David confused and questioning not only his faith but his very sense of self. But, with time, David realised that the rural world was also beautiful. Far from the cramped and often poverty-stricken East End, the countryside was wild and wonderful - an adventure playground in which a curious lad was free to flourish. Immersed in the ebb and flow of country life, David harboured a secret. Increasingly, he didn't want to return to the dirty streets of the East End. Sometimes, he didn't want the war to end. David's moving memoir is about a small boy's burgeoning love of the countryside and the confusion he felt about missing - and yet not missing - home. Set against a wartime backdrop of flaming skies and pluming black smoke, it is a celebration of the wonder and tranquility of the natural world that changed the shape of David's life.