Coming Home by Rosamunde Pilcher

From Barnes & Noble

The bestselling author of The Shell Seekers and September has enthralled readers around the globe with her blend of romance and historical drama. In this beautifully detailed and memorable story, the life and times of Judith Dunbar are chronicled from her pre-war boarding school days, where she makes friends with a wealthy girl and is introduced to a privileged world, to the turbulent WWII years. As it tells the story of Judith's coming of age, the changes brought to England by the war are intricately woven into the story. Full of the warmth and characterization Pilcher's readers have come to expect from the popular author.

From the Publisher

One of the most beloved storytellers of our time, Rosamund Pilcher first achieved international recognition with The Shell Seekers.  Then came September, brimming with memorable characters, people we cared about, cherished and loved.  These two remarkable stories have become modern classics around the world.

Now, after five years in the writing, Coming Home is the tale Rosamund Pilcher believes to be the capstone of a lifetime of writing.  Her most ambitious and compelling work yet, Coming Home is a vast canvas, and a vividly drawn portrait of an era close to us in time, yet now disappeared.

Like The Shell Seekers, Coming Home is an intensely personal story.  Like September, it teems with marvelous, memorable characters.  Coming Home is a story to be savored, an old-fashioned tale hardly anyone knows how to tell anymore.  In telling the story of Judith Dunbar and her loved ones, Rosamunde Pilcher decribes each family member with warmth, wisdom and clear-eyed insight.  Coming Home is ia totally involving story of a young woman's coming of age, coming to terms with both love and sadness, and, in every sense of the word, Coming Home.

Publishers Weekly

Set around the time of WW II, Pilcher's tale of youthful friendship and romance spent 16 weeks on PW's bestseller list. (Aug.)

BookList

Pilcher's novel is big, both in size and scope. Yet its charm is in its details. The book's heroine is Judith Dunbar, who is a schoolgirl of 13 when the tale begins in 1935. Sent to boarding school in Cornwall because her parents are posted to Singapore, Judith becomes friends with Loveday Carey-Lewis, who introduces her to a family and an estate, Nancherrow, that is to influence her for the rest of her life. Pilcher does a marvelous job of describing life in England before World War II. Readers, especially Anglophiles, will adore the care Pilcher gives to setting her scenes, decorating them with everything from Cornish wildflowers to china dogs to particular tartan plaids. The same care is evident later in the tale, as Pilcher chronicles the changes brought by the war to the fabric of British life. There is, of course, more to the novel than a carefully rendered historical backdrop. There is a story, too, and a quite involving one even if its outlines are familiar from other melodramas set against the dramatic events of history. As Judith makes her way to adulthood in the midst of great wealth, great tragedy, and, naturally, romance, Pilcher effectively balances the demands of plot with the pleasures of revisiting a different place and time. Fans of the author's previous books, such as "September" (1990), will know what they're getting into and willingly plunge in headfirst. A Literary Guild main selection and an 850,000 first printing indicate supreme confidence on the publisher's part.

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