The Wooden Shepherdess - Tapa dura

The sequel to The Fox in the Attic, The Wooden Shepherdess takes up the story of its hero Augustine in America in 1924. After a year of aimless wandering Augustine returns, a wiser and more mature man, to his sister Mary and her husband, Gilbert Wadamy, in Dorset. In Germany, Hitler uses his own trial after the ill-fated Munich putsch as a propaganda platform, before retiring to jail to write Mein Kampf and consolidate his position as leader of the National Socialist Party. Back in Britain, Augustine witnesses the social contrasts between working class and upper classes in a Britain mired in the consequences of the Depression. The novel ends with a vivid and terrifying account of Hitler s party purges in the Night of the Long Knives. This edition also contains the twelve opening chapters of the, sadly unfinished, third part of Richard Hughes s epic historical fiction.

This historical novel follows the fortunes of Augustine through the inter-war years and also charts Hitler's rise to power as he recovers from the 1923 Munich putsch.