The Land of Green Ginger

Joanna Burton, a missionary’s daughter, grows up dream of the far-off lands she will visit. At eighteen, tall and golden-haired, she meets Teddy Leigh, a young man on his way to the trenches of the First World War. Teddy tells her he’s been given the world as a golden ball to wear on a chain and she is swept away by the opportunity for another, romantic, voyage of discovery. But the fabled shores fade into the distance when, after the war, the magic land turns out to be the harsh reality of motherhood and married life on a wild Yorkshire farm. Winifred Holtby’s witty and compassionate novel was first published in 1927, and offers a refreshing contemporary portrait of the domestic effects of the First World War.