It is 1942 – in the town of South Downs, Massachusetts – and Babe, Grace and Millie have been best friends since their first day of kindergarten. Despite their differences, they've played together, grown up together, shared each other's secrets; and when the threat of war becomes a reality for America too, the girls begin a new phase of their lives together: each quickly marries her first true love, before their men leave for Europe.
With the men away – first training, then to England, then the Front – life is difficult for these newly married women. And when no fewer than sixteen telegrams arrive on a single morning in 1944, bearing news of the worst kind from the War Department, the girls know that nothing in South Downs will ever be the same again...
Although some men do make it home, they are all damaged in some way. As each woman struggles to rebuild a life, they face not only the challenges closest to home – the question of remarriage, of how to tell a child about their absent father – but also the wider issues of a country in flux – sexism, racism, anti-Semitism.
Tinged with tragedy, yet filled with hope, Next to Love is the story of three women at the heart of the century – a celebration of their friendship across three decades of the most unthinkable adversity. It is a remarkable novel you are unlikely to forget.
