Casualties

How do you move forward when you are haunted by the horrors of the past?

London, 1975

With her marriage at breaking point and worrying she is failing in her relationships with her teenage sons, Sue McClusky is at a crossroads.

So when Mariolain, an old friend of Sue’s, suggests the whole family come to stay with her in The Netherlands, Sue accepts immediately.

Sue and Cal soon see their own troubles reflected in the marriage of Mariolain and her husband Niels.

But as confidences grow between the couples, it becomes clear that the Dutch couple’s problems are more deep-seated than Sue could have ever imagined.

Thirty-five years earlier, both Mariolain and Niels suffered unimaginably during the Second World War.

As Sue learns the harrowing truth, she begins to feel that maybe the shocks of the past can help heal the rifts of the present…

CASUALTIES is a heart-breaking saga spanning from Nazi-occupied Holland and the prisoner-of-war camps in Indonesia to the struggles of family relationships in 1970s Europe.

‘How lucky we are to have Lynne Reid Banks! Casualties is her eighth novel and easily her best’ – Daily Telegraph

‘ tremendously moving ... Shattering details of wartime hardships and childhood abuse are insinuated into matter-of-fact particulars about daily domestic routines’ - Publishers Weekly

‘Casualties is a human-centred story, layered and compelling ’ - The Good The Bad and The Bookish