Meriel Scholfield

Ally is intelligent, studious and engaged in a losing battle to gain her mother's approval and affection. Her mother, Elizabeth, is a religious zealot, keener on saving prostitutes than on embracing the challenges of motherhood. Even when Ally wins a scholarship and is accepted as one of the first female students to read medicine in London, it still doesn't seem good enough.

This book provides a new slant on both the Guide movement and World War II. During the Blitz, the Girl Guides dug bomb shelters, grew vegetables and helped millions of evacuated children adjust to new lives in the country. Many were taken as prisoners of war and survived concentration camps.