At the Firefly Gate

by Linda Newbery (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2005

  $3.29

  Henry is not happy when his parents move from London to the village of Crickford St. Thomas. But he soon forms a friendship with an elderly neighbour, Dottie, and she starts to tell him stories about the Second World War and about another Henry who was a navigator in the RAF.

  Then Henry sees a man standing at the garden gate, smoking a cigarette and surrounded by a cloud of fireflies. He appears to look straight at Henry - could he be the navigator? And what is the significance of the ghost's appearance?

• Used

  Hardcover
  2004

  $4.13

  Henry never quite fits in. He feels like an outsider - and about to become even more so when his family move to the country and the prospect of a new secondary school looms. He retreats more and more into his shell, until he meets Dottie a frail old lady, but one with tremendous spirit. He feels as though he knows her, as though they have been friends for many years. And as she tells him about her wartime romance with an RAF navigator also called Henry, so our Henry is drawn into that world. In a series of mysterious, sometimes frightening events he re-enacts Henry's life...and learns that despite being dreadfully afraid, Henry acted heroically at the cost of his own life. Only our Henry knows the true story and it shows him a way through his own self doubts and misgivings.