The Draytons and the Davenants: A Story of the Civil Wars

A woman in New England opens a chest of old journals and finds her childhood again. What she remembers is England before the Civil War, seen through eyes that saw everything: the royal ceremonies, the quiet cruelties, the day the cow died. This is history from the hearth, not the battlefield. Through young Olive's notebooks we meet the Draytons and the Davenants, watch her friendships deepen with the enchanting Lettice, listen to her brother Roger's questions that adults cannot answer, and feel the slow gathering of a storm that will tear her world apart. Charles writes with the tenderness of someone who knows that what seems permanent is about to be lost, and that the smallest details of childhood carry the weight of empires falling. A novel for readers who understand that the most important history lives in the questions children ask and cannot forget.