Out of the Rubble

In the shadow of the Blitz, eleven-year-old Alice and her eight-year-old brother Thomas are torn from the only world they have ever known. One terrible night in London changes everything, leaving them with no choice but to be evacuated to the countryside. Taken in first by a kindly widow in Brambleford and later by their stern but steady Aunt Edna in Kent, the children must learn to navigate loss, resilience, and the strange rhythms of wartime life. From blackout curtains and ration books to nights in the Anderson shelter, Alice and Thomas discover that survival is not only about enduring the bombs overhead, but about the small rituals of daily life; folded linens, shared bread, whispered vows in the dark. As they grow into their new lives, they find unexpected strength in community gatherings, schoolyard friendships, and the wisdom of the adults who take them in. But when a parcel arrives from a London neighbor; carrying precious fragments of their past; the children realize that memory itself can be a kind of anchor, holding them steady in the storm. This is a story of love remade in the unlikeliest of places, and of two children who learn that family is not only what you are born into, but also what you build together in the hardest of times.