Once the Deed Is Done

To be truly alive means having to make choices

To be truly alive is also, quite simply, to love

1945. Dead of night and dead of winter; war brings a stranger to the door; a family is tricked into a act of compassion and danger.

Later when peace finally arrives in their small town on the German Heide, Freya and her sister are grateful. The fighting is over, so are the Nazi times; the labour camp on the town outskirts will surely be closed now.

But with peace come soldiers - English this time - and hundreds of new arrivals: more strangers - forced labourers from across the heathland and beyond, all with their own losses and stories, and all housed in a new camp on the site of the old. Among these refugees are children - Janina and Lukas - waiting and waiting for word of their mother.

In Freya's home too there is waiting -to be asked about that snowy night; and family secrets, that Freya and her sister must confront. When is an act of kindness an act of betrayal?

Rachel Seiffert is one of Virago's most critically acclaimed contemporary novelists. Her first book, The Dark Room, (2001) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and made into the feature film Lore. In 2003, she was named one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists, and in 2011 she received the EM Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Field Study, her collection of short stories published in 2004, received an award from PEN International. Her second novel, Afterwards (2007) third novel The Walk Home (2014), and fourth novel A Boy in Winter (2017), were all longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. Her books have been published in eighteen languages.

To be truly alive means having to make choices To be truly alive is also, quite simply, to love 1945. Dead of night and dead of winter; war brings a stranger to the door; a family is tricked into a act of compassion and danger.Later when peace finally arrives in their small town on the German Heide, Freya and her sister are grateful. The fighting is over, so are the Nazi times; the labour camp on the town outskirts will surely be closed now.But with peace come soldiers - English this time - and hundreds of new arrivals: more strangers - forced labourers from across the heathland and beyond, all with their own losses and stories, and all housed in a new camp on the site of the old. Among these refugees are children - Janina and Lukas - waiting and waiting for word of their mother.In Freya's home too there is waiting -to be asked about that snowy night; and family secrets, that Freya and her sister must confront. When is an act of kindness an act of betrayal?

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