FIREWEED

by Jill Paton Walsh ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 16, 1970

He was evacuated to Wales, fled an insulting delousing, returned to an empty house blockaded by ""DANGER UNEXPLODED BOMB""; she had been on a torpedoed ship to Canada, held over in a hostel (parents: ""not all that performance again""), run away rather than wait for another; they met leaving an Underground shelter, recognized each other as fugitives, and paired up: Bill and Julie, a bubble in the eddies of wartime London. The barrow men give them odd jobs but other adults impinge, would turn them in; or should they reveal themselves--Bill, loath to desert Julie, lets his father get away, and she, in return, fails to contact her parents when the next ship to Canada sinks. In the basement of her aunt's wrecked house they find a place to be 'warm, quiet, by ourselves'; can it have been for only a week, Bill wonders later. And then little Dickie, the waif they've sheltered, takes sick and Bill must, must, must find milk at dawn during an air raid. When he returns the house is gone, collapsed, and Julie emerges a plaster statue. . . miraculously alive. But now, in the hospital, Miss Julia Vernon-Greene and not, her blazer and striped tie brother says, for Bill. The call to class is un-American but not untranslatable (into more subtle cultural pressures), and the bond between Bill and Julie, their finest hour, irradiates the scene: ""The oddest thing was that the leaves turned gold and fell off while Hitler's bombers filled the sky."" He is fifteen, she is somewhat younger, and theirs is a romance their counterparts can credit.

Pub Date: March 16, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1970

Categories: FICTION