Magnolia Square in South London was a friendly and vibrant place to live, not le
ast for Kate Voigt and her father. Carl Voigt had been a WWI prisoner of war who
had married a cockney girl and never gone back. Now widowed, he and Kate were p
art of the London life of the square with all its rumbustious and colourful char
acters.
Then came the war. Suddenly it seemed the Voigts were outcasts becaus
e of their German blood. When Carl was interned, Kate's only support was her bes
t friend Carrie, and Toby, the R.A.F.
pilot whom she loved. Finally, when Tob
y was killed, and even Carrie turned against her, she found herself pregnant and
totally alone. Late one Christmas evening, during the Blitz, she was approached
by a wounded sailor asking for lodgings.
Leon Emmerson, like Kate, was also
a lonely misfit because if his parentage. It was to be the beginning of a new fr
iendship, of startling and dramatic events in Kate's life. And as the war progre
ssed, as the Londoners fought to help each other while their city was bombed and
burned, so the rifts in the community were healed, and Kate and those she loved
became, once more, part of Magnolia Square.
