Dear Little Corpses by Nicola Upson

The mass evacuation in September 1939 from London to the countryside of thousands of children was a lesson in planned logistics. Of course like all plans something has to go wrong somewhere and one isolated incident did Two children went missing, one got misplaced due to sheer mischief and families all around and a community went to pieces. In a small Suffolk village Josephine has to come to terms with the onset of war, and that her partner and lover Martha is leaving to go to America. In such uncertain times when she will come back is unknown. On top of that with the missing girl from a fair in open view of all the villagers is something that has to be tracked down carefully to find out what happened to the little girl. As usual in Upson's novels, nothing is as straight forward as just a missing girl and when the story is unravelled we find one missing girl, two missing girls and then bodies. Complicated in its telling you have to follow the stories of several families who try to deal with the trauma of separated families - husbands at the warfront, wives alone without the emotional support children can give you and not knowing whether your children are happy, settled and safe. I was also thinking of how in the present context of what my grandson was told "stranger danger" how we would deal with this forced separation. Anti vaxxer protests will be nothing compared when parents take to the streets! I dont blame them either. (the parents not the anti vaxxers!) The story made one think and drew the reader into the emotional morass of it. Like Nicola Upson always does. Sent by Crooked Lane Books for an unbiased review, courtesy of Netgalley.