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Helen Simonson

Biography

Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson was born in England and spent her teenage years in a small village in East Sussex. A graduate of the London School of Economics, she has spent the last three decades in the U.S., and currently lives in Brooklyn. Helen is married, with two grown sons, and is the author of the New York Times bestselling debut novel, MAJOR PETTIGREW'S LAST STAND. THE SUMMER BEFORE THE WAR is her second novel.

Photo Credit: Nina Subin

Books by Helen Simonson

by Helen Simonson - Fiction, Historical Fiction

East Sussex, 1914. Hugh Grange, down from his medical studies, is visiting his Aunt Agatha, who has just risked her carefully built reputation by pushing for the appointment of a woman to replace the Latin master. But just as Beatrice Nash, the teacher, comes alive to the beauty of the Sussex landscape and the colorful characters who populate Rye, the perfect summer is about to end. For despite Agatha’s reassurances, the unimaginable is coming. Soon the limits of progress, and the old ways, will be tested as this small Sussex town and its inhabitants go to war.