Belonging [British Home Child historical fiction]

By Sandra Joyce

This book is historical fiction based on a real person who emigrated to Canada as a British Home Child.

A follow-up to 'The Street Arab- The Story of a British Home Child', the heart-rending story of Robert James continues in Joyce's second book, 'Belonging'. Now grown, Robbie struggles to find his place in the world that has committed him to otherness.

Like so many Home Children during the Second World War, Robbie enlists to serve the country that has ostracized him for years. On the battlefields of North Africa and Italy, he forms a rare friendship with fellow Home Boy, Tiny. Meanwhile, his former girlfriend, Annie begins a new relationship of her own while serving as a nurse in London during The Blitz.

Belonging is a tribute to the author's father and the 118,000 British Home Children, like him, "It is a story of the real life injustice and hardships faced by these young souls sent to Canada from Great Britain as indentured farm workers and domestics. Repeatedly unsettled and stigmatized by the communities that vowed to foster them, these Home Children went on to spend their lives searching for a place where they belonged."

The book is a story unto its own that can be read alone or as a sequel to the earlier book.

277 pages, 6x9" paperback
ISBN 978-0987764027 Welldone Publishing, Toronto, 2014