Under a Fire-Red Sky

LoveReading4Kids Says

April 2025 Book of the Month

Geraldine McCaughrean’s father, Lesley Jones, was a firefighter in London during the Blitz. He is the inspiration for this wartime story, and one Les Jones is an important character in the book. The focus of the story however is four young people: Lawrence, famous for his cleverness, and building his own flying machine; Franklin desperate to become a firefighter and ready to do anything to achieve that; Susan, aka the Gremlin, escaping her brutish father; and Olive, fireman’s daughter and storyteller. They all have their reasons to jump off the train carrying other young evacuees to safety and that action turns them into the Meridians, an alliance that becomes a deep friendship, one which supports them all during those terrible years of destruction.

Each has their own challenges and adventures, each comes of age as the story unfolds, reestablishing relationships with their parents on their own terms, even as bombs drop around them. McCaughrean says her father never talked about things he saw but she describes them for him, presenting us with scenes, both panoramic – London on fire - and specific, falling walls, collapsing theatres, dying men, women and children.

It’s harrowing, but it has to be, the resilience of her four young characters providing hope like ‘the occasional shaft of sunlight [that] gaped open-mouthed at the devastation’.

Geraldine McCaughrean is one of our very finest writers and this is powerful, moving, unforgettable reading, a historical novel that seems particularly important today.

Andrea Reece

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