Island Song Free online reading

A spellbinding story of forbidden love and family secrets on German-occupied Guernsey.

1940. Guernsey is first bombed, then occupied, by the Germans. A year earlier, young, naive and recently married Helene waves good-bye to her husband, who has enlisted in the British army. Protected only by her father and Nanna, Helene must carve out a life on the island for the length of the war. Forty years later, her daughter Roz begins a search for the truth about her father and stumbles into the secret history of her mother's life.

Island Song speaks of the moral complexities of living with the enemy and the messy reality of human relationships in a tightly knit community. As Roz discovers, truth is hard to pin down, and so are the rights and wrongs of those struggling to survive in the most difficult of circumstances.

Madeleine Bunting is the author of several works of nonfiction including The Model Occupation, the Channel Islands Under German Rule. A former Guardian columnist, this is her first novel.