The Heroes' Welcome

This swing volume in Young's engaging WWI-era trilogy picks up where My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You ended, just months after the armistice. Now, each of the finely drawn main characters has to figure out how to get past the horrors of the Great War and accept the changes it has brought. Young Riley Purefoy, a working-class boy elevated to captain during the war, faces the biggest challenge: living with a disfiguring facial wound. Riley meets this new world head-on. He marries his childhood sweetheart, the wealthy Nadine Waveney, who served as a nurse during the war, and searches for a suitable occupation. Meanwhile, Peter Locke, Riley's former commanding officer, tries to blunt his memories of the trenches with alcohol, ignoring his devoted wife, Julia, and their young son. While Peter and Julia seem stuck in the past, Peter's sister, Rose, still working as a nurse, is determined to become a new woman of the postwar period, dedicated to career rather than family. Parts of the plot seem a bit Downton Abbeyish, but Young manages to create characters who project an appealing combination of melancholy and moxie, imbuing her story with such quiet power that readers will be anxiously awaiting the final installment. (Mar.)