The Heroes’ Welcome

The Heroes’ Welcome
Louisa Young

The Heroes’ Welcome is the incandescent sequel to the bestselling R&J pick My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You. Its evocation of a time deeply wounded by the pain of WW1 will capture and beguile readers fresh to Louisa Young’s wonderful writing, and those previously enthralled by the stories of Nadine and Riley, Rose, Peter and Julia.LONDON, 1919Two couples, both in love, both in tatters, come home to a changed world.When childhood sweethearts Riley and Nadine marry, it is a blessing on the peace that now reigns. But the newlyweds and their old friends Peter and Julia Locke wear the ravages of the Great War in very different ways. Where Nadine and Riley do their best to forge ahead and muster hope, Peter retreats into drink and nightmares, unable to bear the domestic life for which Julia pines.

Copyright (#u4da12643-0db2-5a5f-ab42-af1f3a2b5c31)

The Borough Press

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London, SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published by The Borough Press 2014

Copyright © Louisa Young 2014

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

Cover photographs © Stephen Mulcahey / Arcangel Images (main image); Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com) (petals, grass and snowdrops).

Excerpts from The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles, translation copyright © 1996 by Robert Fagles. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

Louisa Young asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Some characters (or names) and incidents portrayed in it, while based on real historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

Source ISBN: 9780007361472

Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780007361489

Version: 2015-02-24

Praise for The Heroes’ Welcome: (#u4da12643-0db2-5a5f-ab42-af1f3a2b5c31)

‘Fierce and tender, The Heroes’ Welcome depicts heroism on the grand scale and the importance of the tiniest act of courage’

Observer

‘Young possesses in abundance emotional conviction, pace and imaginative energy, and these qualities will draw readers with her through time and space, as she unfolds the story of the Lockes and Purefoys on their journey through the 20th century’

HELEN DUNMORE, Guardian

‘If you read one novel about the effects of the First World War this year, make it this one. It has brain with its brawn and deserves a hero’s welcome’

The Times

‘Powerful, sometimes shocking, boldly conceived, it fixes on war’s lingering trauma to show how people adapt – or not – and is irradiated by anger and pity’

Sunday Times

‘Energy and charm’

Evening Standard

‘A moving exploration of the war’s toll on a generation … deeply affecting’

Metro

‘A brilliant, passionate, intense examination of what it is to survive a war and to negotiate a peace with a body and mind that have been irrevocably altered’

ELIZABETH BUCHAN

Dedication (#u4da12643-0db2-5a5f-ab42-af1f3a2b5c31)

RJL

RIP

‘Joy, warm as the joy that shipwrecked sailors feel when they catch sight of the land … only a few escape, swimming and struggling out of the frothing surf to reach the shore, their bodies crusted with salt but buoyed up with joy as they plant their feet on solid ground again, spared a deadly fate. So joyous now to her the sight of her husband, vivid in her gaze, that her white arms, embracing his neck, would never for a moment let him go …’

from TheOdyssey,

trs Fagles

‘I knew that I was more than the something which had been looking out all that day upon the visible earth and thinking and speaking and tasting friendship. Somewhere – close at hand in that rosy thicket or far off beyond the ribs of sunset – I was gathered up with an immortal company, where I and poet and lover and flower and cloud and star were equals, as all the little leaves were equal ruffling before the gusts, or sleeping and carved out of the silentness. And in that company I learned that I am something which no fortune can touch, whether I be soon to die or long years away. Things will happen which will trample and pierce, but I shall go on, something that is here and there like the wind, something unconquerable, something not to be separated from the dark earth and the light sky, a strong citizen of infinity and eternity. The confidence and ease had become a deep joy; I knew that I could not do without the Infinite, nor the Infinite without me.’

‘The Stile’

from Light and Twilight,

by Edward Thomas

‘It has taken some ten years for my blood to recover.’

from Goodbye to All That

by Robert Graves

Table of Contents

Cover (#uf4df9c06-1777-5b47-98b6-32a500089064)