Young war widow Emmy Penry-Jones lives in an eccentric mansion on top of a cliff in western Cornwall where she nurses her invalid mother and dodges the demands of the local Women’s Institute.
It’s July 1943 and the world has been at war for almost four long years, the bitter sea battles in the Atlantic showing no sign of abating. One morning Emmy discovers two men washed up on the beach below her house, both utterly exhausted and barely conscious.
Washed-up sailors are not uncommon on the beaches of western Cornwall and Emmy nurses the men back to health and prepares to send them off to London to return to the sea, just as she has with others in the past. But these men are not like any shipwrecked sailors she has rescued before and Emmy is soon drawn into a web of intrigue that will test her ingenuity and her patriotism.
Rocked by accusations of war crimes against a man she knows to be innocent, Emmy launches a desperate bid to defend him, all too aware that the accusers could turn on her. The trial marks a turning point and Emmy is drawn further into the deadly cycle of post-war retribution from which only one man can save her.
Love and Retribution is a story of wartime love and loss, of deceit and betrayal and of extraordinary courage and unsung heroism. From the fishing villages of Cornwall, the story transports the reader to a U-boat base at Saint Nazaire, the British War Crimes Trials in Hamburg and the chaos of life in a post-war London still gripped by rationing and shortages.
The novel is dominated by the fight to survive, not just the great conflict that has torn Europe apart, but the destructive pursuit of revenge that poisons its aftermath.
About The Author
Catherine McCullagh trained as a history and language teacher, spent twenty years in the Australian Army and then left to establish herself as a freelance editor. Fifteen years later, inspired by the extraordinary stories that surrounded her, she embarked on a new career, this time as a writer.
She has published three non-fiction works, Willingly into the Fray, War Child and Unconquered. Her first historical novel, Dancing with Deception, was followed by Secrets and Showgirls and her latest work, Love and Retribution. Catherine lives in Canberra, Australia, and loves bushwalking, reading and travelling to exotic locations.
