The Goose Road

Description

A debut novel about one girl's remarkable journey across France during WWI. France 1916. Angelique Lacroix is haymaking when the postman delivers the news: her father is dead, killed on a distant battlefield. She makes herself a promise: the farm will remain exactly the same until her beloved older brother comes home from the Front. "I think of it like a magical spell. If I can stop time, if nothing ever changes, then maybe he won't change either." But a storm ruins the harvest, her mother falls ill and then the requisition appears... In a last-ditch attempt to save the farm from bankruptcy, Angelique embarks on a journey across France with her brother's flock of magnificent Toulouse geese.

Rowena House studied journalism at LSE and spent several years on Fleet Street, reporting for various news agencies. She has lived and worked in France, Africa and Belgium as a Reuter's foreign correspondent and covered the fall of Addis Ababa at the end of Ethiopia's 30-year civil war. She now lives in Devon and works as a freelance journalist. In 2013, Rowena won a competition run by Andersen Press, which published her winning entry, "The Marshalling of Angelique's Geese" in War Girls, a collection of short stories about WWI as seen through the eyes of young women. The Goose Road is her novelization of that story.

"An impressive debut with a tenacious heroine. One for slightly older fans of Emma Carroll's historical fiction." * The Bookseller * "House is a wonderful storyteller, combining simple prose with a relish for domestic detail. This is a story that young readers will remember long after GCSE timelines have been forgotten." * Telegraph.co.uk * "House is a wonderful storyteller, combining simple prose with a relish for domestic detail. This is a story that young readers will remember long after GCSE timelines have been forgotten." * The Telegraph * "An enjoyable book that tells a different kind of war story. Young Angelique Lacroix makes a great heroine and her epic journey across France with her geese to save the family farm, is amazing." * Ross, 11, LoveReading * "The Goose Road' is now one of my favourite books! It can change your mood in a second! You are happy then suddenly you are almost crying! It's romantic, happy, sad, adventurous....all of my favourite things in one book!" * Hope, 11, LoveReading *