Our Last Letter by Liz Trenow – Blog Tour & Book Blast sponsored by BookOuture,
Our Last Letter by Liz Trenow Published by Bookouture on 02/21/2020
Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction
Format: eBook, Paperback
Pages: 320
From the New York Times bestselling author comes an enthralling historical story inspired by true events - a brilliant, lonely young man and the ordinary English girl who changes his world forever - for readers who loved The Ragged Edge of Night, All the Light We Cannot See, and The Nightingale.
I'm getting desperate not hearing from you. Your letters are a lifeline and there is something I need to tell you. Please write, please, please.
1937, England. Kathleen Motts, with her flame-red curls and gift for geometry, grew up just across the water from the secretive RAF base, Bawdsey Manor, on the bleak and beautiful east coast. When the stars overhead turn red as warplanes surge towards her home, Kath is desperate to do her bit, enlisting as one of the first female radar operators, helping to keep the brave pilots safe in troubled skies.
Vikram Mackensie is quiet, exceptional at maths and music, and always the outsider. When he's recruited for a top-secret war project at Bawdsey Manor, Vic's chance to belong has arrived at last. He may only be half-British, but he vows to help the country he loves.
From their first meeting on windy cliffs above a rocky beach, Kath arrives like a blaze of warmth into Vic's grey life and turns the colour back on. As the war intensifies, so do Kath and Vic's feelings for each other. They may have grown up on different sides of the world - but if the war can't keep them apart, nothing will.
But fate intervenes when Vic is posted to America, and Kath is left heartbroken and alone. As the silence between them grows, so does the secret that Kath is holding... As the sky falls around Kath, will she ever have more than one last letter?
A heartbreaking and gripping novel, Our Last Letter shows that even in humanity's darkest moments, light and love will find a way.
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World War Two era books are not my usual genre. However, Our Last Letter absolutely swept me away.
The characters are so well-written, I felt like I knew them all. The descriptive settings put you into the story from page one. You can feel the fear, worry, and turmoil of the times.
I also learned so much about the development of radar for the war, it was a fascinating aspect of the story.
I would highly recommend this book to all lovers of historical fiction, romance, world war 2 era stories, and great story-telling.
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My Thoughts:
World War Two era books are not my usual genre. However, Our Last Letter absolutely swept me away.
The characters are so well-written, I felt like I knew them all. The descriptive settings put you into the story from page one. You can feel the fear, worry, and turmoil of the times.
I also learned so much about the development of radar for the war, it was a fascinating aspect of the story.
I would highly recommend this book to all lovers of historical fiction, romance, world war 2 era stories, and great story-telling.
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Our Last Letter by Liz Trenow
About Liz Trenow
Liz Trenow is a former journalist who spent fifteen years on regional and national newspapers, and on BBC radio and television news, before turning her hand to fiction.
She lives in East Anglia with her artist husband, and they have two grown-up daughters and two beautiful grandchildren.
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Book Excerpt from Our Last Letter by Liz Trenow:
Prologue
December 1973
The town seems to hunch its back against the bitter easterlies; the beach and pleasure gardens
are deserted. But the shopping streets are decked in full Christmas plumage and throngs of
shoppers flutter like moths towards the glitter of the lights. Children in colourful bobble hats
and scarves are gathered around the memorial cross, defiantly shouting out their carols into
the biting wind.
He recalls the place in wartime, grey and brown, the streets down at heel and fearful, the
beach barricaded with barbed wire, tank traps, and pillboxes. In his current mood, he would
have preferred it that way. Fleeing from the festivities, he steers his old Volvo to the left, not
wanting to risk driving past the station, where he first set eyes on her. His heart recoils. He
cannot bring himself even to think her name.
At last, having managed to navigate without mishap the dimly recalled grid of residential
streets, he finds himself driving along the familiar undulations of the Ferry Road. It is so
misty he can see nothing on either side of the road, although he knows that on a good day he
would be able to see the river meandering, snake-like and sparkling, through the marshes to
his left, and to his right would be the golf course leading to dunes and beyond to the North
Sea.
Half a mile further on, just before the road runs into the river, he pulls up beside the Martello
tower and climbs stiffly out of the car, gasping as the chill, sharp wind slices like a scalpel
through the loose weave of his old tweed jacket. Curtains of salt spray slap his 8 Liz Trenow
face. He’d forgotten how wild and unprotected this lonely spit of land could feel; how the
weather seems to come at you from all directions.
But he is here for a purpose. He returns to the car, grabs his small case and walks briskly
along the rutted road, ignoring the inviting twinkle of Christmas lights in the windows of the
Ferry Boat Inn and the tea room. The mouth of the estuary looks as treacherous as ever, a
maw of rushing tides meeting the oncoming North Sea in a maelstrom of eddies that have
been known to cast even experienced sailors onto the sandbanks.
It is only five minutes to four, but at the landing stage – a new addition; in the old days they
had to jump out onto the beach – there is no sign of any boat or ferryman. The ferries used to
run all day like clockwork on the hour, until late into the evening, so he waits for a while,
watching the water swirling beneath the wooden piling of the jetty, the seaweed writhing in
the current like a tangle of mysterious sea creatures.
Then he spies to the side of the landing stage a white-painted paddle wedged against a post,
hand-lettered with the words Call ferry. Arrangements are clearly more informal in
peacetime. He waves it about, feeling self-conscious, stops for a moment then waves it again.
Is Charlie still alive, he wonders idly, or perhaps the ferry licence has gone to one of his sons
by now? Either way, no one turns up. He sets the paddle back and wanders towards the
harbour master’s shed. The door is locked and the lights are off.
How many times has he waited here, in every sort of weather? He even recalls that once or
twice, having missed the last ferry, he and Johnnie had crawled beneath the hull of a beached
fishing boat for shelter, trying to sleep out the night so that they could catch the first run of
the morning and arrive back just in time for the early shift. Oh Johnnie, how I have missed
you all these years.
The four metal masts, those old familiar friends, are barely visible today through the sea mist,
but he knows they are there, on the other side. There too, part hidden behind the pine trees
bordering the opposite shore, are the red brick turrets of the manor house itself, that magical,
dream-like place, more fairy castle than RAF base, whose secrets were known to only a few.
Even now, nearly thirty years later, he feels a flicker of pride.
On the other side of the river he can just make out rusting signs – Ministry of Defence
property, strictly private, no entry. So they must still be using the place; although he wonders
what on earth for, when the greatest threat these days is a bomb that could wipe out a whole
country, even the whole world? However hard he peers through the darkening gloom, he can
see no lights in the windows.
Drawn by the sound of the waves crashing on the shore behind him, he turns and struggles
across the shingle to the sea. How he has missed this sound, the rhythm of the pounding
breakers followed by the shushing of the shingle with the withdrawing wave, repeating itself
along the length of the beach: boboom… shhh… shhh… boboom. No wonder composers like
to write about the sea, he thinks to himself, for the rhythms are already prescribed. ‘Behold,
the sea itself,’ he hums, almost happy despite the wet, the cold and his overarching despair,
‘Dusky and undulating… and on its limitless heaving breast, the ships.’
At the water’s edge he stops, shielding his eyes against the salt spray and scanning the one-
hundred-and-eighty-degree expanse for any sign of ships: a tanker, a fishing boat or even a
hardy pleasure sailor; but there is not a single vessel in sight. The seascape is empty, melting
without pause for any horizon into the grey-blue sky.
He shivers again – he is getting colder and wetter by the moment. There will be no warm
welcome at the Manor tonight.
If you enjoyed this extract from Liz Trenow’s OUR LAST LETTER, you can grab a copy
here: Our Last Letter by Liz Trenow
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Our Last Letter: Absolutely...Shop on Amazon 
Our Last Letter: Absolutely...Shop on Amazon
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