9 entries in the world of The Wireless War.
Tom Pengelly is the farm boy Edie is billeted alongside — first her rival, all "vacky" taunts and turned shoulders, then her closest ally and the friend who roots her into Devon. Near her own age and twice as sure of his own ground, he…
Hettie is the Pengelly farm's most disagreeable hen — big, rusty, bad-tempered, and nobody's friend, and the bird that pecks Edie the moment she arrives. She becomes an unlikely star of the letters home: "give Hettie my regards" turns into…
Joan Pengelly is Tom's older sister, on the edge of grown-up when Edie arrives — a careful politeness that keeps a newcomer at arm's length. As the war pulls the older ones away into service, she takes up her own share of the work…
Mr Pengelly is the farmer who takes Edie in — large, undemonstrative, and kinder than a wary London girl first knows how to trust. He carries her case up the lane the night she arrives and says little, but the little he says is plain and…
Mrs Pengelly is Edie's billet host — the gruff, fair, unsentimental Devon farm wife who is the hardest person in the room to fool and the one who does the most without ever saying so. She teaches Edie the farm and never softens the lesson…
Vera Fletcher is Edie's mother — the steady heart of the Bethnal Green house and the voice in the letters that reach Edie in Devon. Hers is the hardest decision in the whole story, and it belongs to the prequel, The Last Ordinary Summer…
Bill Fletcher is Edie's father — an East-End dockman who signs on with the merchant navy and sails the Atlantic convoys through the war. Mostly he is an absence: a voice on a crackly trunk-call, a card from a far-off port, a danger Edie…
Mrs Hooper is Vera's neighbour and friend in Bethnal Green — the Fletchers' London anchor, all sharp opinions and sharper kindness. She and Vera see the war out together on their own street, and her voice, carried in Vera's letters, is one…