Patricia Wastvedt Book order (chronological)

A moving, inter-war family saga from Patricia Wastvedt, the Orange Prize Longlisted author of 'The River". In 1947, Elisabeth Mander's German nephew comes to stay: Stefan Landau, her dead sister's teenage son, whom she hates and loves before she's even set eyes on him. Orphaned by the war and traumatised by the last, vicious battles of the Hitler Youth, Stefan brings with him to England only a few meagre possessions. Among them a portrait of a girl with long copper hair by a young painter called Michael Ross - and with it the memory, both painful and precious, of her life and that time between the wars. Spanning decades and generations, "The German Boy" tells the moving story of two families entangled by love and friendship, divided by prejudice and war, and of a brief encounter between a woman and a man that touched each of their lives forever. Born in 1954, Patricia Wastvedt grew up in Blackheath, south London, and spent her summers in Kent. She has a degree in Creative Arts and an MA in Creative Writing, and her first novel, "The River", written in her late forties, was long-listed for the Orange Prize. She teaches at Bath Spa University, and is also a manuscript editor. She lives and writes in a cottage in Somerset.

In a small village in Devon in 1958 two young children are found drowned. Their parents, Isabel and Robert, are devastated, but as time goes by their tragedy becomes part of the everyday fabric of village life. Thirty years later, Anna arrives. She comes to the village on a whim, hoping for a fresh start. She and doesn't tell anyone that she is pregnant. She moves in with Isabel and for a short time the women find solace in each other's company. The baby's arrival, however, causes powerful feelings of loss and heartbreak to surface, and Anna begins to question whether Isabel's feelings towards her child are entirely benign ...