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Billington, Rachel, 1942-

Clouds of love and war / a novel by Rachel Billington. - London : Universe Press, an imprint of Unicorn Publishing, 2020. - 416 pages ; 20 cm

Occasionally panoramic, more often intimate, in Clouds of Love and War author Rachel Billington balances a detailed and highly researched picture of the life of a Second World War Spitfire pilot with the travails and ambitions of a young woman too often on her own. The result is both a gripping story of war and a sensitive story of love, a love that struggles to survive. Eddie and Eva meet on the eve of the Second World War. Eddie only wants to be a flyer, to find escape in the clouds from his own complicated family. However, the Battle of Britain makes a pilot's life a dangerous way to flee reality. Eva has her own passionate longing: to become a painter. When Eva's Jewish mother disappears to Germany, she is left alone with her elderly father. Both Eddie and Eva come of age at a time that teaches them that happiness is always fleeting, but there are things worth living - or dying - for. Through the connecting stories of these young people and their wider families, and against a background of southern county airfields, London, Oxford, Dorset and France, Rachel Billington brings the world of war time England, now eighty years in the past, back to life.

ISBN: 9781913491130 1913491137

Subjects--Topical Terms:
Air pilots--Great Britain --Fiction.
Bildungsromans.
Man-woman relationships--Fiction.
World War, 1939-1945--Aerial operations, British--Fiction.
Families--England --20th century --Fiction.

Index Terms--Genre/Form:
Historical fiction.

LC Class. No.: PR6052.I4 / B55 2020 PR6052.I4 / C56 2020

Dewey Class. No.: 823/.914