England, 1918

The novel begins in the year 1918 in England, near the end of the Great War. Young men are absent, killed in duty or still fighting at the front, and women have taken on jobs to fill their places. This is a changing society and the social structures and traditional conventions of gender, etiquette, and class are rapidly transforming due to the war.

Bucksley Cross

The land girls are assigned to work the gardens at Lady Charlton’s estate, Bucksley House, which is in Bucksley Cross Village in the countryside of Devonshire. The big house is close to a church and an old stone school building. The village is nestled at the edge of the moor and is built around a sloping green with a weathered Celtic cross in the middle. On one side of the green is a row of thatched cottages and on the other is a...