“POPPY,” by Mary Hooper, Bloomsbury USA Childrens, Aug. 30, 2016, Hardcover, $17.99 (young adult)
Mary Hooper’s “Poppy” is my kind of book — historical fiction set during wartime that features a strong protagonist.
In England, prior to World War I, your destiny was out of your hands. If you were born in the upper class, you were expected to make a good match and fulfill the responsibilities set forth by your family and position. If you entered service, working below stairs, that’s where you’d stay. But with the onslaught of WWI, everything changed. Men from all walks of life served on the battlefield, and women answered the call back at home.
In 1914, Poppy is a beautiful 15-year-old maid for the aristocratic de Vere family. Poppy has a crush on Freddie, the youngest de Vere son, and it appears Freddie feels the same. The two are worlds apart, but the war could break down society’s walls.
When it becomes clear the war isn’t going to end quickly, Poppy decides to volunteer as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse. Years of service have prepared Poppy for hard work, but the brutality of war is hard for anyone to stomach. As Poppy works to save men returning from the front, she discovers a new kind of freedom and the person she wants to become.
“Poppy” is a mix of “Downton Abbey” and PBS’s “Crimson Field,” which follows the lives of WWI frontline medics as they heal the wounded. It’s got all the conflict, love and drama you could want in this sort of novel. I appreciated Mary Hooper’s attention to detail. She never gets mired in her focus on medical and military procedures. But she still manages to pull the reader in with compelling narrative.
If I could find one fault with “Poppy” it’s in the book’s abrupt ending. I got to the end and it just stopped. It felt unfinished. Come to find out, “Poppy” was first published in the U.K. and it has a sequel. I wanted to know what happened next so badly, I did something I rarely do — I bought the eBook of “Poppy in the Field” so that I wouldn’t have to wait to find out how Poppy’s story played out.
