The Walnut Tree

by Charles Todd

First published 2012

Amazon

4.3(1,188)

When war breaks out in 1914, Lady Elspeth Douglas is visiting friends in France and becomes trapped among refugees and wounded soldiers near Calais. An encounter with Captain Peter Gilchrist draws her towards nursing and away from the aristocratic future planned by her guardian, even though she is already promised to another man. Back in London, Elspeth trains alongside Bess Crawford and seeks a way to return to France, where love and duty have become impossible to separate.

The novella follows the rapid transformation of elite women’s lives during the opening months of the First World War. Class privilege offers protection but also imposes obedience, while nursing provides socially acceptable work that carries real danger and independence. Elspeth’s romantic conflict is inseparable from the wider collapse of the assumptions that governed Edwardian society.