Synopsis:
Jersey 1945 ~ In the immediate aftermath of Liberation from the Nazis, Jean Parris and her family wait anxiously for news of her deported father.
And now a different kind of war has been unleashed — among the islanders themselves. Demands that those suspected of collaborating with the Nazis be punished intensify. Neighbor turns against neighbor as distrust flourishes and accusations fly, especially toward women who engaged in romantic relationships with German soldiers.
Jean and her family learn that her father died in a German prison and was reported to the Nazis by an anonymous woman. She is enraged, intent on justice. The suspect, Hazel Le Tourneur, denies Jean’s accusation. But she did have a motive for wanting Jean’s father gone. Jean questions everything, and soon discovers not only the truth about her own family, but the full implications of her own deceptions. When Hazel catches Jean’s clandestine meeting with a German soldier, the two women form an unexpected bond in the face of complicated, ruinous consequences.
Beyond Summerland is a story of ordinary people living in extraordinary times . . . and long-buried family secrets. Author Jenny Lecoat explores suspicion and prejudice, female friendship, and the fictions we cling to when we cannot afford to let them go. It is a tale of the dangers of finding oneself on the wrong side of history . . . and survival.
Review:
Author Jenny Lecoat was born in Jersey, Channel Islands, fifteen years after the end of World War II. The islands, situated fourteen miles from the coast of France, are part of the British Isles and the only British territory occupied by the Nazis. Both sides of Lecoat’s family were heavily involved in resistance activity during the war, and one of her grandfathers built crystal audio sets capable of accessing the BBC, which was, of course, illegal. Her great aunt, Louisa Gould, was reported for harboring an escaped Russian slave worker, and perished in the gas chamber at Ravensbrüch. Harold Gould, her great uncle, became the only British survivor of Bergen Belsen. The two elderly sisters her family blamed for the betrayal were never prosecuted due to a lack of evidence, and Lecoat does not know whether they were truly guilty, although she notes that they were “ostracized for the rest of their lives.” The story was the basis of a feature film released in the United Kingdom, Another Mother’s Son, in 2017 and in 2020, her first novel, The Girl from the Channel Islands, was published and became a New York Times bestseller.
Her family’s wartime experiences provided inspiration for Beyond Summerland, which she spent three years researching and writing. She says her story began coming to life in 2020 during the pandemic and was born into “a world increasingly divided by opposing certainties, with so many reluctant to challenge deeply held convictions.”
As the book opens, it is June 1945, just one month after Liberation Day. Violet Parris, forty-six years old but having aged greatly during the preceding five-year Nazi Occupation, and her nineteen-year-old daughter, Jean, are hoping for information about Jean’s father, Philip, who was arrested fifteen months earlier. It has been a year since they received a letter from him. He was only sentenced to serve fifteen months, so they are hoping he has been released and is on his way home. He was convicted of illegally possessing a wireless radio at his shop, P. Parris, Ironmongers, where he permitted neighbors to listen to broadcasts with him. But the Constable can provide no update about his status.
Violet hopes that Philip’s younger brother, Eddie, will be able to assist when he returns to Jersey. Jean dreads his arrival. Her father disapproved of his brother’s decision to escape a week before the Occupation began. Eddie has been working in England ever since. When he discovers the wreckage of the home he built fifteen years ago, he moves in with Violet and Jean. Worse, a man names Charles Clement appears at their door to inform them that he was imprisoned with Philip, who succumbed to dysentery on a cold winter day. They know he is telling the truth when he produces a treasured family photo that Philip carried with him, explaining that he promised Philip he would deliver the news in person if he was lucky enough to survive.
In the aftermath, Jean and her family learn for the first time that Philip’s radio wasn’t discovered during a random search of his shop, as they had been led to believe. They are horrified to belatedly find out that someone reported him. And a witness observed him arguing with a tall woman in her late twenties with reddish hair several times in the weeks leading up to his arrest. But who would report a pillar of the community, a kind man beloved by his friends and neighbors? And who was the woman he argued with? What could he possibly have quarreled about with her? Jean vows that she will not only get answers to all the questions surrounding her father’s demise but also seek justice for him.
Hazel Le Tourneur lives with her arthritic father in an apartment above Philip’s shop which has remained shuttered and fallen into disrepair since the day German soldiers ransacked it and emerged with the radio, returning shortly thereafter to confiscate the rest of its useful contents. News of Philip’s death greatly upsets her, even though she had criticized him harshly as BBC broadcasts emanated loudly from his contraband radio through open windows, putting everyone in the area in jeopardy. She had never liked Philip, “but a death like that, in the squalor of a foreign jail, alone and terrified . . .” was unconscionable. Her heart goes out to Violet and Jean, and Hazel knows that she must “be part of something, useful.” She decides to join the Democratic Movement and work to ensure Jersey’s future.
Thirty-one people attend Philip’s memorial service and Hazel is among them. When Jean spots her, she asks her mother if she recognizes Hazel, who matches the description of the woman seen arguing with Philip. Violet identifies her as one of the residents of the apartments about the shop. And someone who hated Philip.
In Beyond Summerland, Lecoat credibly crafts a portrait of a town in turmoil and on the cusp of what will come next. Even though World War II has ended and the Nazis have been defeated, life does not, of course, immediately revert to the way it was before the Occupation. The islanders are still suffering. Nazis overtook and wreaked havoc in Jersey, and as some of the residents return, they find all the ways that the town has changed dramatically. In Eddie’s case, the house he lovingly built was ransacked and destroyed as people foraged for food, supplies, and shelter after being displaced from their own homes and jobs. He is bitter and angry, and with his brother’s death confirmed, he takes up residence in Philip’s home, usurping the role of head of the household with Violet’s assent. Jean has always found him overbearing and boorish, and she resents both the sense of entitlement he displays, as well as the transformation she sees in Violet who, at first, was inconsolable as she mourned Philip. Worse, they are intent on pushing Violet into a relationship with Tom Maloret, who works as a clerk in the States office. He is pleasant enough and a gentleman, but Jean cannot reveal why she is not attracted to him. Even though she is wracked with guilt, she proceeds to “use him mercilessly for her own ends” to conceal her romance with a German soldier. Naively optimistic, she does understand that her secret, if revealed, would have draconian consequences.
Lecoat’s characters are richly drawn, complicated, and deeply and fascinatingly flawed. Both Jean and Hazel are sympathetic, and Lecoat’s compassionate depiction of their struggles resonates. At the heart of the story is a deftly constructed, compelling, and very clever mystery concerning Philip around which swirls a tale of two determined young women who must come to grips with the past in order to fashion their futures. It is a tumultuous journey for both of them.
Jean takes a job as housekeeper for her mother’s sister and her husband, even though she resents the way she is treated and the little concern they displayed for her and Violet during the war. Hazel is hired as a teacher, but her political association threatens her ability to earn even a meager living. Jean’s relentless pursuit of the facts surrounding her father’s arrest and imprisonment have reverberations for Hazel, who discovers Jean’s secret. Each of them is required to assess the knowledge they have gained and make choices about what they will do with the information. Revelations about her parents’ marriage, as well as Violet’s relationships with her sister and Eddie, add to Jean’s consternation. Initially intent on not just learning the truth, but also exacting revenge on the person who reported her father, Jean is forced to reconsider her course of action. Hazel feels the lasting impact of the Occupation and islanders’ continuing obsession with finding and reporting collaborators. “I’m outspoken. People don’t like that, especially in women,” she laments. And even after she leaves the Democratic Movement, she is “viewed with suspicion. . . . Once people have marked you as the enemy, it’s hard to change their minds.” As in the case of the women accused of reporting Lecoat’s relatives, Hazel knows that a conviction is not necessary to destroy a life. “They’ll just ostracize us. Work, shopping, social events. . . . You don’t need to send people away – you can just banish them perfectly well in their own homes,” Hazel notes. Both women want to be free to live their lives as they see fit but recognize they will have to fight to achieve their goal. For Jean, in particular, that means accepting truths that are at odds with everything she thought she knew about her family and moving forward with a radically altered worldview after the “lines between truth, lies, wishful thinking, and pure fantasy” become hopelessly blurred.
Beyond Summerland is a riveting examination of the repercussions of war, as well as a study of the lengths to which people will go to survive it, the power of secrets, the price of revenge, and the bravery required to forgive. It is also an exploration of how real and lasting friendships can surprisingly be forged from convoluted and tragic shared experiences. Lecoat says she hopes readers will experience “interesting female characters struggling with huge dilemmas, a page-turning story, and echoes of our contemporary world amid the 1945 setting — human nature never really changes.” She has achieved and exceeded that goal. Beyond Summerland is a unique and must-read volume for fans of World War II-era historical fiction.
Excerpt from Beyond Summerland
Jersey, Channel Islands
June 1945
Excitement billowed down the street. It poured out of every doorway and crackled in the air, tickling the back of people’s necks, beckoning everyone into this thrilling, historic morning. And what a morning! Yesterday’s storm had vanished north over the English Channel, leaving bright sunshine and a powder blue sky. Now the whole of St Helier was waiting, rinsed and gleaming, impatient with anticipation. A stiff southwesterly gusted through the streets of the town, carrying on it the faint murmur of a distant, chattering crowd, and standing on her front path to breathe it all in, Jean felt a surge of genuine optimism. She ran her fingers through her mousy hair to revive its sagging shape, tugged at her jacket to make sure that the moth hole in her blouse was hidden, then called back into the house:
“Mum! Hurry up, or we’ll get stuck at the back.”
Violet Parris shuffled out, her ancient leather handbag perched carefully on her arm. Jean watched as she turned, methodically, to lock the Chubb. It was a habit that recent years had ingrained, and with pilfering still rife around the parish, it made sense to be cautious, though everyone missed the days of open front doors. “Things will settle down by Christmas,” people kept saying. And perhaps they would. Jean took in the pallid face beneath the battered felt hat and considered what a frail, brittle figure her mother cut these days, the anxious, darting eyes and slight stoop of constant burden more pronounced in sunlight than in the gloom of the house. Certainly, most people would have guessed her to be older than forty-six. But then, Jean supposed, every living soul on this island had aged a lifetime in the last five years. She felt a sudden urge to reach out and hug her mum tightly but, knowing Violet would balk at such a display, offered her arm instead.
They set off at a pace that Jean calculated her mother could maintain for the half-mile walk. The street was filled with the sound of garden gates clanging as women shooed husbands and children onto the pavement, reknotting ties and smoothing errant hairs before scuttling toward the town center. One or two of them carried folded Union Jacks ready to unfurl at the crucial moment, and Jean felt a pang of envy; their own flag had been used for kindling back in the winter, and no replacements could be bought now. But then, it would be inappropriate for the family to appear in any way frivolous. Jersey was a small island. People liked to talk.
By the time they reached the end of Bath Street, the roads were already thick with people heading for the Royal Square. At the corner of the covered market on Halkett Place, two streams of moving bodies became a human river, pushing the two of them along like paper boats, and Jean wished again that they had set off earlier. As a woman behind stumbled slightly, forcing them both forward, she felt her mother’s fingers tighten on her arm; quickly, Jean tugged her away from the melee toward a quiet side street and leaned her mother against the concrete wall, supplying a handkerchief, which Violet immediately dabbed across her forehead.
“All right?”
Violet shook her head. “So many people. Why didn’t we go down the Albert Pier, see the SS Jamaica coming in, or find a place along the Esplanade?” Jean, who had suggested these exact choices last night, merely took the dampened handkerchief back and tucked it into her sleeve. As she did so, her eyes fell on the shop front, a small bakery set halfway down the turning. The display window had been boarded up to replace the shattered glass, but evidently the vandals had returned for a second visit, because now a huge swastika was painted on the plywood in black pitch. She glanced at her mother and saw that she too had become transfixed by it.
Violet jerked her chin a little. “Collaborators.” Jean nodded. What had the proprietors done to earn such a reputation? Had they served German soldiers their bread? Fraternized with them? She imagined the angry faces of men rushing toward the shop in the dead of night, bricks and rocks in their hands. What had happened to this island in such a few short weeks?
Liberation Day, less than a month earlier, had been the most significant, emotional event that any islander, young or old, had ever experienced. The most longed-for day in their history had come at last, and, with the arrival of a British task force in the harbor and the official surrender of the German military, five brutal years of Nazi Occupation had finally come to an end. So long and arduous had the Occupation been—Jean was a schoolgirl of just fourteen when it began—that for the first week of freedom she had found the transformation impossible to take in. To be able to leave the house without curfew…to speak fearlessly on the street without fear of spies or listen to the BBC news on a neighbor’s radio! But best of all was the joy of eating a proper meal again, as the British army unloaded crate after crate of supplies, and the Red Cross ship Vega brought more relief parcels. Given the near starvation of the previous year, extravagances such as tinned meat, lard for cooking, sugar and tea had moved them to tears of relief as they unpacked their box. The taste of raspberry jam, spooned straight from the jar in a moment of pure elation, would stay with her forever.
Yet those early days had also brought bewilderment. After years of inertia, with entire months punctuated by nothing but the tedious struggle for food and fuel, Liberation brought a tornado of welcome but exhausting developments. They had dutifully exchanged their reichsmarks for sterling at the local bank and watched the mines being cleared from the beaches; they had read public announcements that the non-native islanders deported by the Germans in the autumn of 1942 had been flown back to England, and that their return was imminent. They had even received, at long last, a letter from Jean’s older brother, Harry, released from service and now back home with his own family in Chelmsford. Horrified at the long-belated news of his father’s arrest, Harry spoke of his frustration at being cut off from all island information for so long but, to Jean’s delight, promised that he would visit as soon as regular transport services resumed. Encouraged by a sense of returning normality, she and her mother would sit at the kitchen table of an evening, cutting out every significant article from the Evening Post and pasting them all into a scrapbook for posterity. And as they pasted, in a whispered voice too soft for the fickle fates to hear, Jean would dare to speak of the coming weeks and the news from the continent that even now might be on its way. Violet would nod and smile, but rarely responded. Hope, Jean calculated, was too heavy a burden for this exhausted woman in the final length of a horrendous journey; better for Jean to button her lip and direct her own dreams into the rhythmic movements of her pasting brush.
Not all the recent news was good. Among the celebratory headlines and the public announcements had been other, troubling pieces. Dreadful photographs of murderous Nazi camps where untold numbers had died. Accounts of local “jerrybags”—island women who slept with German soldiers—chased through the streets by marauding gangs who shaved their heads and stripped them naked. Reports of the island’s insurmountable debts. And one terrifying front-page report of a local father and son, deported eighteen months earlier, who had both perished during their incarceration. After reading these, Jean would retire to her bed and lie awake for hours in the grip of a dark, low-level panic, until falling into a fitful sleep just as the sun rose. She told no one about this, especially not her mother. She could not pinpoint the exact moment when she had assumed the maternal role in their relationship, and suspected it had crept up on them over many months. But Jean now knew instinctively that her mother’s shaking fingers indicated that Jean would need to peel the vegetables for dinner, or that Violet’s single, hot tear on her book’s page in the quiet of the evening required a hot drink and an early night. There would be time enough for her own feelings, Jean told herself, when this nightmare came to an end, which it surely would soon. So today, despite the sight of the boarded-up bakery and the unsettling feelings it brought, Jean squeezed out a comforting smile and placed a hand on her mother’s arm.
“We can just go home now, if you want.” Jean thought of their still, gray kitchen at the rear of the still, gray house and dreaded her mother’s nod. But Violet just gave a little frown.
“No, we’ve come this far. Come on.”
The Royal Square was, as expected, heaving with people.
Men, women and children were squashed together like blades of grass and stewards had placed barriers across the middle of the square to contain the crowd. Jean dragged her mother through the jostling bodies and, instructing Violet to hang on to the back of her jacket and not let go, began to slither her way through the crush, making the most of any tiny gap. She smiled helplessly at any gentleman in her path until he retreated, and threw apologetic backward looks when she trod on someone’s foot or dislodged their hat, until they found themselves only two heads back from the barrier just as the official cars pulled into the square. A huge cheer tore through the crowd, and by standing on her tiptoes and craning her neck Jean managed to find a sliver of a clear view.
The cars lined up outside the library. A young, uniformed Tommy opened the door of the shining black Ford. And suddenly there they were. Right there on the pavement in front of the States of Jersey government buildings, not thirty feet away, all the way from Buckingham Palace—the King and Queen! Jean gazed at King George, resplendent in his uniform, as he was greeted by low-bowing Crown officials. The Queen, magnificent in a feathered tam hat and draped decorously in a fox fur, accepted a huge bouquet of Jersey carnations, waving graciously. The cheers around the square were thunderous now, with snatches of patriotic songs breaking out here and there. Jean looked at her mother and saw her own excitement reflected back. But at that moment a woman next to them wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and grinned at Violet.
“Isn’t it marvelous? I can’t believe it!’
Jean felt her mother’s body stiffen beside her as she dredged up a suitable courtesy. “Yes, wonderful.”
“It’s over, really over! We can start living again!”
Jean watched Violet’s mouth turn to a grim line of sandbagged wretchedness. By the time her bottom lip began to tremble, Jean knew it was over — public tears were a humiliation that could not be tolerated, and the window of fake composure was closing fast. With one last reluctant look at the royal couple, Jean put her arm around her mother’s waist and pushed out through the crowd until they were both back on the high street, breathless and unsteady. In the doorway of a shop, shielding her from passersby, Jean again offered her handkerchief, and this time Violet pressed it across her face as she sobbed into it for several moments, emanating tiny stuttering sounds like a wounded animal. Eventually the shaking eased, and she took a deep breath.
“Sorry. It was just what that woman said.”
Jean rubbed her arm. “I know. But it can’t be long now. For all we know Dad’s already on his way home. Could be out there on a boat right this minute.”
Violet nodded and managed a small wet smile. Jean, working hard to hide her disappointment at missing this once-in-a-lifetime spectacle, again offered her arm, and the two of them began the slow walk back to the house, Jean’s mind whirring. Was it right to offer such optimism?
No one knew if her father was actually on his way home. It was fifteen months since he’d stepped onto that German prison boat, headed God knows where. Twelve months since his last letter. And not a word from the authorities since Liberation.
She told herself they had no choice but to believe, but one thing was certain—the Occupation was far from over. Not for them.
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