I’m pleased to be welcoming Deborah Klee back to Novel Kicks and the blog tour for her latest book, The Evacuee’s Secret.

A forgotten village. A dangerous secret. A love that defies time.

In a Yorkshire village, condemned to be flooded as a reservoir, WW11 evacuee, Louise Pearson, commits a crime with devastating consequences.

A secret that keeps her away from her childhood home and her best friend and soul mate, Richard, for twenty years. 

In 1965, fleeing a dangerous marriage, Louise returns to Yorkshire assuming a new identity. But the village she once knew and loved is about to be submerged to create a reservoir. 

As the waters rise, so do the ghosts of her past. 

Will Louise uncover the strength to face her demons and reclaim the love she left behind? Or will the secrets that surface pull her under forever?

A heart-breaking story of love, loss and betrayal.

Deborah has shared an extract from The Evacuee’s Secret with us today. We hope you enjoy. 

*****beginning of extract*****

I am sharing the prologue to The Evacuee’s Secret, where we meet Louise as a fourteen-year-old evacuee in 1945. The story then moves to 1965 where thirty-four-year-old Louise has lived with a secret for twenty years. A secret that has kept her away from her soulmate and best friend Dicky. When Louise’s gangster husband threatens to expose her secret, Louise is compelled to return to Thorncrest, just as the valley is about to be flooded to create a reservoir.

*****

May 1945

Louise stood outside the farmhouse door, a cardboard suitcase at her feet. Her lower lip trembled, the lump in her throat painful. She couldn’t stop shivering; her bones felt cold as ice. Did they already know what she had done? Joan told her last night that she was being sent back to London. Louise assumed that meant she was going back home to Mum, but what if she was being sent to prison?

Louise turned to go back into the farmhouse to ask Joan, just to make sure, but the Red Cross lady came out. ‘Okay. Jump in the car.’

No goodbyes. Becks Farm had been her home, Ma and Pa, her family, since she was evacuated from London, two years and seven months ago.

One of the new farmhands whistled as he clanked a couple of milk pails across the yard. Louise didn’t recognise any of the lads and Land Army girls helping out. Milking the cows and feeding the chickens had been her job. Now, she had no place on the farm. Ma was staying with a friend in Harrogate. Louise hadn’t seen her since the day of the accident. Pa had died in hospital. The most important people in her life––gone. And it was all her fault.

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