Acts of Love and War

By: Maggie Brookes

Narrated by: Avita Jay

Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

A remarkable story of love and sacrifice centred on three young English volunteers in the bloody Spanish Civil War, from the author of The Prisoner's Wife.

1936. Civil war is tearing Spain apart, and the world is on the brink of chaos...

Twenty-one-year-old Lucy is frustrated with her constrained life in Hertfordshire, teaching and keeping house for her domineering father. But she is happy to be living next door to Tom and Jamie, two brothers she has known since childhood, and whom she loves equally.

But everyone's lives are turned upside down when Tom, the younger, decides to join the Republican cause in the bloody war in Spain. His older, fervently Catholic brother Jamie soon follows—but as a reporter for the opposing forces that support General Franco in keeping Spain rigidly authoritarian, with the help of both Hitler and Mussolini.

Lucy decides the only way to ensure the brothers' safety is to defy her father and travel to Spain herself and persuade them to come home. Yet when she sees the horrific effects of the war on the people—especially the children—she quickly joins the lifesaving work of the Quaker volunteers who have arrived from almost as many countries as have the International Brigades of fighters. Lucy knows that both brothers are in love with her; she herself is deeply torn between them.

The atrocities and casualties mount and Lucy knows that the question of which man she might spend her life with might be irrelevant, as the chances of either of them surviving diminish with every passing day.

This meticulously researched, deeply affecting novel is based on real memoirs of the Spanish Civil War. It is both a love story and a tribute to the remarkable women who fought with compassion and bravery to save the innocent victims of a war that was a foretaste of the carnage soon to come in World War II.

©2022 Maggie Brookes (P)2022 Viking

Critic reviews

"An all-too-timely emotional gut-punch of a novel that creates a world of peace and philosophy, belief and resistance. Rendered in pure poetry, Brookes' threads of poignant grace connect the lives of three unforgettable characters. . . . Immersive and humane, Acts of Love and War . . . cements [Brookes] as one of historical fiction's most lyrical and intelligent voices."—Rachel McMillan, author of The Mozart Code and The London Restoration

"Emotionally captivating and authentic, Acts of Love and War is an unforgettable story of how love is refined and defined when thrust into the crucible that is war. . . . This is a war story that absolutely needed to be told."—Susan Meissner, bestselling author of The Nature of Fragile Things

"A vivid, immersive novel about a remarkable woman helping refugees in a bitter, heartbreaking war. I couldn't put it down."—Gill Paul, bestselling author of The Collector's Daughter