Agent: Shannon Hassan, Marsal Lyon Literary Agency. Walsh expertly contrasts the lives of orphaned Marion with privileged Evelyn to expose their common desire to show their value outside societal labels. Marion also harbors a secret about Evelyn’s true parentage, as Evelyn’s parents failed to disclose she was adopted. Evelyn and Marion’s paths cross when Marion returns to be a leader in the new Wrens, her romance with Eddie having turned out not as they’d hoped. In a parallel narrative set in 1940, well-to-do Evelyn Fairchild joins the Wrens, desperate to prove she’s overcome a childhood disability impacting one of her legs by serving as a motorcycle driver. Meanwhile, Marion works as a dispatch rider and helps her new friend Sara train carrier pigeons to send and retrieve messages. As they each make their way toward the front lines in France, their friendship develops into romance. In 1917, Marion Hoxton ages out of the orphanage she was raised in and joins the Women’s Royal Naval Service (the “Wrens”), while her best friend Eddie Smith joins the Royal Navy. One connection that reshapes both their lives forever.Walsh ( Becoming Bonnie) offers an enticing story of two Englishwomen serving their country during both world wars. Two stories of survival, family, and finding ones own happiness. But unthinkable moments of challenge and resilience change Daphne in ways she could never expect, including an eye-opening encounter where she must come to terms with the secrets in her own past. She sees it as an opportunity to help the country she loves and live up to her father's expectations. When the Special Operations Executive invites her to be an agent in France in World War II, her childhood of anonymity and her love of languages make her the perfect fit. She throws herself into education, collecting languages like candy in a desperate attempt to finally earn her fathers approval. Miraculously, Violet survives, but her obligation to her mother and siblings still remains, leaving Violet to wonder if she'll ever be able to put her tumultuous life at sea behind her and pursue a life and love all her own.ĭaphne Chaundanson grows up as an unwanted child after her mother died in a tragedy.

But disaster strikes again, this time as the Britannic strikes a mine. When the world enters the Great War, she becomes aboard as a nurse, helping men who could very well be her brothers. Her distraught mother is too ill to work, that responsibility falling to Violet as the oldest of nine. Her childhood was fraught with illness and death in her family.

No one can understand why she would return to sea, but Violet is simply trying to survive.

Walsh (Over and Out).In this middle grade historical novel inspired by the experiences of a young Pearl Harbor survivor, a brave girl copes with wartime and family upheaval by completing a bucket list with her dog. Violet is a stewardess and wartime nurse who not only survives a shipwreck but also two sinkings, one on the infamous Titanic. Katherine Easter at Zonderkidz has acquired world rights to Operation: Happy by Jenni L.

Unsinkable by Jenni L. Walsh