If you subscribe to my reader newsletter, I shared the gorgeous cover for The Teacher Evacuees (out September 25, 2025), first in my WW2, British home front women’s fiction series as Rose Warner, in the April edition.

From the English village setting, to the book’s heroine, Canadian-born teacher Victoria McKaye looking just as I imagine her, the cover is a delight.

But how did the designer blend fact with fiction to evoke such a powerful sense of place and time?

The schools

When teachers and pupils are evacuated from London to the fictional North Norfolk village of Hazelbury in September 1939, the local school isn’t big enough to accommodate evacuees and villagers.

As a result, Victoria teaches the youngest children in the village hall.

The fictional school was inspired by several real North Norfolk brick and flint buildings, including the former Blickling (primary/elementary) School. It opened in 1867 and closed in 1953 and can still be seen near the National Trust’s Blickling Estate.

The village hall school is inspired by what’s now The Old Reading Room Gallery & Tea Room in Kelling.

The village

Hazelbury village is also inspired by several real Norfolk villages including Overstrand and Cley next the Sea.

The village church, where teachers and pupils are, like many Britons were, at Sunday service when war is declared, dates from medieval times.

It’s an amalgam of several local churches, including the one pictured.

Victoria and WW2 vibes

Victoria, who comes from my home province of Manitoba, Canada, has a Scottish father and English mother.

On the cover, she has the “Scottish Celtic look” I describe in the story, and her hair, clothing and general appearance make her true to the time.

The two vintage planes overhead, a familiar sight in wartime, are a nod to a nearby RAF (Royal Air Force) base, one of many in Norfolk and elsewhere in Eastern England in the 1940s.

From fact to fiction

All my books, contemporary and historical, are strongly rooted in the places where they’re set.

That’s especially true in The Teacher Evacuees which celebrates a part of England dear to my heart, and where, even eighty years later, echoes of wartime life still dot the landscape.

There are more dangers than German bombs in wartime…Will her move to the countryside bring hardship, adventure—or love?

UK: The Teacher Evacuees is available for pre-order (ebook & paperback) from most online bookshops, including Amazon UK here.

Rest of world: Pre-order information coming soon.

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