Wartime tale is full of drama

If you’re trying to decide which books to take on holiday this year, you could do worse than this engaging saga set on the island of Crete.

Forget binge-drinking holidaymakers and banana boat trips – Leah Fleming’s Crete is the scene of a dramatic wartime battle, daring escapes and longheld secrets.

The story begins in May, 1941 when the Greek island is invaded by paratroopers from the air. After a lengthy fight, thousands of British and Commonwealth soldiers are forced to take to the hills or become escaping prisoners of war, sheltered by the Cretan villagers.

Prior to the war, Penelope George had lived a charmed existence preparing to be a debutante. But she has found it an empty life; a gilded cage with its door firmly shut on adventure and independence.

When her sister Evadne needs her help in Athens, Penny seizes the opportunity to escape the straitjacket of London society. Arriving in the Greek capital, she reinvents herself, finding her true vocation as a Red Cross nurse. Just another stranger among strangers, she throws herself into her work and new life in bustling Athens. Then war breaks out, and life changes forever.

Penny finds herself stranded on Crete, tending the wounded and dying as one of the few foreign nurses left on the battlefield.

Forging a dangerous friendship with Yolanda, a young Jewish nurse, Penny attracts the attention of a high-ranking German officer. The attention is, at first, unwanted, but little does Penny realise how this chance encounter, against a chaotic wartime backdrop, will change her life.

Fast forward 60 years and Lois West and her young son, Alex, hold an 85th birthday celebration for feisty Great Aunt Pen. It is time for Penny to return to the island, making the journey she never thought she would dare to. A lifetime after she thought she had left Crete for good, she must re-live those final dark days when she was stranded on the island as the last remaining female foreigner.

This is the story of a pilgrimage that will lead Penny to a reunion she never thought would happen – and to the truth behind a secret buried deep in the past for more than half a century.

Leah Fleming divides her writing time between her farmhouse in the Yorkshire Dales and an olive grove in Crete. Her love of the island shines through her lively prose, leaving the reader with a yearning to be basking in the sun beneath the branches of a gnarled old olive tree.

Leah uncovers a little-known aspect of the Second World War conflict in the Greek islands, when island communities were devastated by invading troops and British lives came under threat.

Meeting a young soldier she knew from her debutante ball days, Penny is confronted with the reality of her place in Crete.

“Be careful, Penny, don’t trust any strangers if the worst happens and we’re defeated. Your presence will already be registered here. They watch the ports and cafes to see who is new in town. You’re easy to recognise. Go native, perfect your accent. Blend in, don’t stand out, dye your hair, cover up and act Greek”

“They’ll need nurses in the hills with the francs-tireurs, the freedom fighters,” he whispered. “Look to the hills. You’re a mountain goat, use your legs and head into the mountains.”

This is a well-paced page-turner, with enough romance, action and intrigue to make for some entertaining poolside reading.