The Care and Management of Lies is Jacqueline Winspear's first stand-alone novel, a departure from her bestselling Maisie Dobbs mystery series, set during the opening months of the Great War. The story chronicles the lives of Tom and Kezia Atterbury, married in June of 1914, and still newlyweds when war is declared in August. Tom enlists for service, among the thousands of men drawn to serve their country. Kezia is left at home, to look after the farm Tom inherited upon the death of his parents.
At the same time, Kezia experiences a rift in her life-long friendship with Thea Brissenden, Tom’s older sister. As Thea becomes a passionate advocate of women’s suffrage and harbors some bitterness about the union of Kezia and Tom, relationships are strained and the women search to rediscover their places in a changing world. Soon, Tom and Kezia finds their beliefs about the war called into question—Kezia when a kindly German prisoner of war is assigned to the farm as a worker, and Tom when he captures a German soldier.
As Tom marches to the front lines and Kezia battles to keep her ordered life from unraveling, the two shield their hearts with letters and cards filled with written comfort.
The Care and Management of Lies is a lyrical drama of love struggling to survive in a damaged, fractured world.
Jacqueline Winspear is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Leaving Everything Most Loved, Elegy for Eddie, A Lesson in Secrets, The Mapping of Love and Death, Among the Mad, and An Incomplete Revenge, as well as four other national bestselling Maisie Dobbs novels. She has won numerous awards for her work, including the Agatha, Alex, and Macavity awards for the first book in the series, Maisie Dobbs, which was also nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel and was a New York Times Notable Book. Originally from the United Kingdom, she now lives in California.
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