The Stolen Baby by Diney Costeloe

 

1941 and the sirens are wailing, indicting another bombing attack on Plymouth and its harbor from the Nazis.  The Shawbrook family rushes to the public shelter.  They have seven children with five living at home.  Everyone has their job to do when the sirens sound.  Mrs. Shawbrook gets the little ones together and takes them to the shelter.  Vera, who is seventeen, grabs up baby Freddy and meets the others there.

But things go massively wrong this night.  Vera is coming home late from her job when the sirens go.  She rushes to the shelter, assuming her mother got Freddy.  When her mother tells her that she thought Vera had Freddy, Vera rushes out of the shelter trying to get back to the house before the bombs fall, but she is unsuccessful.

In another house, Maggie doesn't care enough to go to the shelter and just goes to her basement.  She already feels like the unluckiest person in the world.  Earlier this year, after several miscarriages, she finally carried a baby to term.  But her son died the next day and life has not seemed worth living to Maggie since.

After the sirens stop, the work of cleaning up and rescue starts.  Unbelievably, the public shelter took a direct hit and all the members of the Shawbrook family there are killed.  David Shawbrook is a warden and cannot believe his family has all been wiped out.  He doesn't know that Freddy somehow survived in the damaged house and was rescued by a young boy and a police sergeant.  

The policeman was Maggie's husband and he brings Freddy home for the night as the public assistance homes are overwhelmed.  Maggie is overjoyed and wants to keep the baby.  Of course, her husband says no but in a twist of fate, he is killed himself the next day.  Maggie decides to keep the baby and name it the same as her son.

It turns out that Vera survives after being hurt in the street.  She, her father, and a sister who was a nurse in another city but who moves home, go to the police and try to find Freddy.  But Maggie is determined to move heaven and earth to keep him.  Who will end up with the baby?

This novel is based on a true story.  Readers will get a sense of the panic and hardship that civilians went through during World War II and the bombing of cities.  Those of us in the United States have been lucky enough to avoid the bombing and misery of modern warfare directed against our country and it is instructive to read of the tragedies and heartbreak that happened elsewhere.  This book is recommended to readers of historical fiction.