Wed 15 October / Book Signing with Angela K. Smith @ The Box Plymouth

Angela K. Smith (EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN LITERATURE, UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH) is the author of three monographs about the role of women in the First World War, and editor of several more. She lives in Devon. Her first novel, The Solace of the Common People, was published in 2022.

Pop in and see her during the free book signing at Bookbag's pop-up at Little Box, The Box, Plymouth. Free tickets here.

Where No Shadow Awaits

Amid the shadows of the Belgian city of Ypres, three lives entwine.

Journalist Helen Parkes seeks a project to combat her personal demons.

First World War veteran Joe Smith needs someone to ghost write his war experience, but is it his story to tell?

Gabrielle Rochard, silenced by history, must find a way for her voice to be heard.

By turns trench narrative, ghost story, murder mystery and romance, Where No Shadow Awaits follows the relationship between Joe, a young English soldier, and Gabrielle, a Belgian peasant girl living close to the front line at Ypres. Their troubled love story, told in their own words, plays out against a backdrop of the battle of Passchendaele in 1917, with repercussions that echo through the following decades.

Trapped within the zone of armies set in a war of attrition, they struggle to imagine a future together, but as the battle for the Ypres Salient rages around them, they are beleaguered by other terrifying obstacles. They encounter enemies where they might expect to find friends and sympathy from surprising quarters.

The story of these entangled lives offers a hidden dark side of the First World War, filled with lost and marginalised voices that will haunt you.