The farm, England
Barbara Wilkes
A Land Girl with dirt beneath her nails and the Blitz still in her sleep. She has learned to live with waiting, but not with the silence after the War Office letter.
Available now
Literary Titan Book Award
2025
Pegasus Road
She had no map, no guide, only the words from Andrew’s letter.
England, 1944. An envelope from the War Office, and three letters, M.I.A., that offer neither a grave nor a promise. And a young woman who decides that waiting is no longer enough.
About the book
A year to the day since he kissed her beneath the willow tree, Barbara Wilkes is still working the land, still reading and rereading the letters of Lieutenant Andrew Calloway, the man who promised on a station platform that he would come back to her. Across the Channel, Andrew keeps her last letter folded inside his jacket as the 6th Airborne Division prepares for Operation Tonga: take the bridge over the Caen Canal, hold the line, clear the way for the men who will storm Sword Beach at dawn.
Then a letter arrives from the War Office. Andrew has been posted missing in action, and nobody can tell her where he is.
That night, Barbara leaves a note for her mother and walks out of the only home she has ever known. She once trained as a nurse; she worked through eight months of the Blitz. It is enough to talk her way aboard a hospital ship bound for the shattered harbour at Cherbourg, and onto foreign soil for the first time in her life.
From there, the road runs east through occupied Normandy: through villages that watch from behind their shutters, into the company of Resistance fighters who move like ghosts between barns and bombed-out churches, and across water where either army might fire first. Towards the last place Andrew was known to be heading. Pegasus Bridge.
From Andrew’s letter
“Hold onto that. Because no matter the distance, no matter the waiting, there is never a moment where you are not loved.”
The characters
Operation Tonga
Lt Andrew Calloway
War has taken his time, his innocence and his peace. It has not taken his reason to fight: the promise he made on a station platform.
Cherbourg
Élise
Sharp-eyed, unreadable, a Gauloises between her fingers. She opens her door to a stranger and gives her a name that works like a key.
The Resistance
Henri
Unshaven, in his fifties, with strong hands and a stocky build. He has lived through too much war and is still fighting. Someone you would want on your side.
England and Normandy, 1944
- Weymouth
- London
- Folkestone
- Cherbourg
- Caen Canal
- Pegasus Bridge
- The home front
- A farm worked by Land Girls, letters that arrive in erratic bursts, the war reports crackling over the wireless.
- The crossing
- Crowded troop trains, the docks at Folkestone and the white hospital ships bound for France.
- Cherbourg
- A port the retreating Germans left mined and blocked with sunken ships, only slowly forced back into service.
- Pegasus Bridge
- The crossing over the Caen Canal at Bénouville, taken by the 6th Airborne in the first hours of D-Day.
Themes
Promises
Words made on the cusp of war: fragile things, carried away on trains bound for uncertainty.
Courage without a uniform
A civilian who crosses into a war zone because no one else will look.
Trust
Strangers in doorways and ditches. Who helps, who watches, and who cannot be read at all.
Sacrifice
The price paid by those who fight in the shadows, and never appear in the reports.
An excerpt from Pegasus Road
From the prologue
The letter had come that morning, the one she had feared, the one she had prayed never to see.
Barbara sat at the kitchen table, the envelope trembling between her fingers, its edges sharp against her skin. The War Office’s insignia stood stark against the crisp paper, authoritative and unyielding, demanding attention even as her vision blurred from the weight of her tears. She had read the words too many times, until they no longer felt like words, just inked wounds pressed into parchment.
Missing in Action.
The phrase burned itself into her mind, settling like lead in her chest. It was different from killed in action, but it was no comfort. It offered neither closure nor hope, only a cruel, hollow uncertainty. It meant there was no grave to mourn, no finality to grasp, just silence where Andrew should have been.
Pegasus Road · Harry Black · 2025
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Available now on Amazon. Recipient of a Literary Titan Book Award, 2025.
Kindle editionISBN 978-1-80623-321-2
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