Please enable JavaScript if you would like to comment on this blog. The point of view is unusual and the characters come slowly to life as we follow the brothers and the wife through the experiences of the men in 1917 and the later search of the two wife and brother for connections to the men who died. Scott is a scholar whose research is extensive but does not appear obvious it doesn't break into the story. An incredibly moving account of an often-forgotten moment in historythose years after the war that were filled with the unknownThe Poppy Wife tells the story of the thousands of soldiers who were lost amid the chaos and ruins in battle-scarred France and the even greater number of men and women hoping to find them again. Scott’s vivid writing puts us in the minds of the protagonists as they search, remember and regret. But it could be any war, any time, with the universal themes she explores. The point of view is unusual and the characters come slowly to life as we follow the brothers and the wife through the experiences of the men in 1917 and the later search of the two wife and brother for connections to the men who died. Caroline Scott’s absorbing debut novel, The Poppy Wife, takes readers into the aftermath of World War I as people rebuild their lives.

Scott is a scholar whose research is extensive but does not appear obvious it doesn't break into the story. She joins with the photographer in what seems like a hopeless quest. She meets with his brother, the photographer, to search in the cemeteries England and the US and France have created where they try to record deaths and identify bodies. The man who has what we would now call PTSD is listed as missing but his wife doesn't believe he is dead. The photographs he takes are for their friends who are looking for comfort of a sort, but he suspects his work is meaningless.

The third man is a photographer who, in 1921, goes from Ypres to Arras to Verdun in France and Belgium to photograph graves and sites where men have been killed, battlefields he experienced during the war. One is killed and one becomes dysfunctional because of what was then called shell shock. Caroline Scott has written a thoughtful novel about the tragedy of World War I, at home and on the battlefield.

The poppy wife