I do love a war time story and this book certainly was a wonderful read. It is not often that i can sit and read for long periods without having to put the book down for a while, but i was so wrapped up in this story, i just kept turning the pages. A very well written book and one that i can recommend. I am not going to write what the story is about, as i always prefer one to read a book for themselves. ~ Jeanette Styles , NetGalley

This was a book which gripped me from the beginning and was annoyed when life got in the way and I had to put it down for a bit! Set during WWII it follows Violet and the people she comes into contact with. Another author I'll be watching for more of in the future ~ Denise Cross , NetGalley

I find war time stories interesting, particularly those that have individual life stories set against the tumultuous period. This is one such with interesting characters. I enjoyed reading it. ~ Priya Prakash, NetGalley

The Peacemaker's truly believable characters had me gripped from the start. The main character commanded both sympathy and annoyance at her lack of empathy and understanding of the terrible tragedies that befell her mother and the complicated relationship between her parents. Written with precision and depth, you could feel yourself taken on a journey with Violet, feeling her pain and anger and deep loss as well as feeling impatient with her for not better understanding her father's own early experiences and how they helped shape his character. A great read. ~ Pixley Clarke-Hill, Review copy supplied by author

Not being - to put it mildly, a keen reader of novels, I had decided to read the Peacemaker over the Xmas - New Year holidays, and did so.I thought the book was beautifully written. It took me a while to get "into the story" but at some point it took a grip of me, and I became interested and desperately curious to know what would happen next. For a long time I suspected that Violet & Daisy were the offspring of Bertie Hollins, but they weren´t. That would have been a reason why Ellis treated his girls so badly. I would have never have guessed that Peggy would have become someone else after she took to drink and the loss of her Bertie. The book was a lovely read and I´m looking forward to your next novel ~ Philip Knight, Review Copy Supplied by Author

I love wartime movies: weird for someone who lost both of their uncles during WWII but somehow it makes me feel like I know the two men I never had a chance to meet. This story does not disappoint - the characters are well crafted and the story engrossing and I found myself sucked in from the first page and was sad when it ended. This was an enjoyable and lovely book, so if you like war-times stories, this would be a great read for you and a good way to learn more about the era if you are in the mood for a historical read. ~ Janet Pole Cousineau, NetGalley

A memorable and enjoyable read, very moving. I think the very distant background context of Munich (and the crackling untuned radio) works well. There were moments when I wanted it more in the middle ground, but recognise that is because of my own political economy lens. Had it been more prominent I think it would have been challenging because Chamberlain's peacemaking is now seen as so compromised. Similarly, it was sometimes uncomfortable for me reading how Ellis's wartime horrors trumped any potential cause that 1939 might have thrown up. I think that works really well. Most of 'us' feel that fascism was worth fighting - but that's much too easy from the comforts of our generation. ~ David Marlow, Review copy supplied by author

Absolutely loved your book, you captured the 'road to war' mood of the late thirties perfectly. Hope you can consider a sequel? The characters are compelling, and it seems to me you have left the door open. ~ Ann Harknett, Review copy supplied by author

The Peacemaker is a skillfully crafted historical novel, set in the North of England. The story centres on Violet, a young woman through whose vivacious, curious gaze, the reader takes a fascinating journey through family life, loves, lies and secrets. On one level, Janet Dean Knight expertly evokes the essence of the North York Moors, its villages, and communities, as each struggles to navigate the aftermath of the First World War. On another level, Violet’s journey reflects the journeys upon which women still embark, nearly one hundred years later. The Peacemaker is much more than a historical novel; more an epic and very personal journey, in which readers will share. Violet is a character you won’t forget and Janet Dean Knight is a writer you shouldn’t forget. An enthralling and enjoyable read to be experienced on multiple levels. ~ Clara Challoner Walker, Author of A Tapestry of Vice and Virtue

A highly accomplished piece of writing, and a social document From the design of its cover, you might expect The Peacemaker by Janet Dean Knight to be a nostalgic memoir. It’s not, it’s unequivocally historical fiction, with big characters and big action. It’s voyage and return, and it’s taming the monster. The setting is big as well; ‘…this wonderful sweep of brown moor patched with the very last of the purple heather...’ It’s 1938, and following the premature death of her mother, eighteen-year old Violet Lowther travels from her working-class home in industrial Barnsfield to rural Thorndale, the original home of her family. She’s met some family members at the funeral and needs to find out more. The atmosphere is claustrophobic, something is very wrong. It’s not only grief, nor the insecurity passed on to her by guilt-ridden Ellis, her miner father, ‘silent, moody, and downright miserable’ – that’s when he’s not full of alcohol and reaching for his belt to give Violet and twin sister Daisy a walloping. It’s much more than that; there’s superstition, there’s fear – ‘fear and love felt to him just the same’ – it’s almost as if there’s some curse on the family, and Violet finds herself falling into a well of secrets, well-guarded, deep, dark and violent. The endorsements on the cover of ‘deft handling…beautiful observation’, and ‘bringing the past into focus’ are understatements. The reader might be forgiven for thinking that the author must have had a previous career as a detective, a forensic scientist – or at the very least a general practitioner, not a detail is omitted. It’s social realism, not just down to the last ‘battered tea-strainer, knitted cosy, rattling cups…hands smudged with newsprint…’ or ‘…damp hands, those of a woman perpetually washing other people’s clothes…’ but down to the last rape in a urine-filled yard, the last miscarriage, the last infant mortality, the last arterial bleed on the Somme battlefield. This isn’t just a novel, it’s a social document. It’s Flaubert! Dean Knight’s writing style is both fast and slow-burn. There’s a lot of emotion on the page, and I didn’t at first feel that I was sharing in the tears being shed and tea poured - both in large quantities. While Violet becomes party to shocking confidences of retired schoolteacher Nell Arrowsmith, what was nagging away at me was rising indignance in the myth that working-class folk were – historically-speaking - immoral because they were always having children out of wedlock. Whereas as events in the story reveal - not unlike Marx’s definition of exploitation - not only could they not afford somewhere to live, some of them couldn’t even afford a marriage licence. And here comes the ‘slow-burn’ bit of Dean Knight’s writing technique - which incidentally produces an effect rather like one might have experienced when being hit while in the school playground, but not actually crying until one got home. A small selection of other practitioners of this delayed action ‘intravenous’ writing style might be; Maggie O’Farrell, Donna Tartt, and Graham Greene. I call it intravenous because one of my ‘musts’ in a fictional reading experience is the need to reach for a dictionary, which during The Peacemaker - as with the above-mentioned writers - I never had to. Instead, I had to put my ‘must’ on the back burner, but I needn’t have worried because Dean Knight is cleverer than that. Violet, Ellis – even the relatively well-educated Nell Arrowsmith have little capacity for stretching their vocabularies. So, this skilful poet author uses ‘usual’ words but in ‘unusual’ ways; ‘…Driven by a sense of doom beyond her distress...’ and, ‘…time had stretched beyond what it ought to…’ and in subtly unusual orders ‘…Her grief had thickened and set on her stomach like a sour indigestible porridge…’ I finished reading The Peacemaker with the feeling that rather like Phil Spector created what became known as the Wall of Sound, Janet Dean Knight has revealed a wall of emotion in which there seem to be neither doors nor windows. A world wall, behind which there are two human types; i) men who go forth to – and are made to - butcher each other, and correspondingly ii) women who are forced to fight a rear guard against rape, the need for abortion, and miscarriage. Eighty years on, and are things really any better? Should Mindfulness courses be mandatory for all men in the 21st century? The novel is by no means devoid of hope, the author goes on to develop Ellis’s character, revealing not only trace elements of intuition, but a startling sixth sense for interpreting the emotions of others when, in curious flashback he secrets himself onto a bench outside Granny Hannah’s house where he eavesdrops on high drama. But in the end, I found myself asking the question, ‘when to delve, and when not to delve?’ I felt that - as in contemporaneous Europe – peace in the family had not been made, nor was it going to be. It leaves me hoping for another volume, if I can brace myself for it that is! ~ Brooke Fieldhouse, Author of The Gilded Ones

Janet Dean Knight writes with care and exquisite precision about the details of working-class lives. Her writing is full of the lyricism and beauty, as well as the deep griefs, of everyday life. The Peacemaker brings the past into new focus, and makes the seemingly ordinary glitter in extraordinary ways. ~ Naomi Booth, author of Sealed: The Lost Art of Sinking

Shortly before her mother dies, Violet is brutally awakened to the difference between her ideas of love and desire, as shaped by Hollywood films, and those of the young men in her home town. Set in 1938 between a northern mining town, and a former mining village high in the Moors, at the time of Chamberlain’s peace overtures to Hitler, this vividly written book examines the persistent impact of the past upon our present and future lives. Its beautifully observed descriptions and sharply realised dialogue engage the reader in a lively and thoughtful tale of when Violet returns to her parents’ home village to search out her mother’s early life but then finds herself face-to-face with the secrets and tragedies that blighted the lives of so many men and women during the First World War. In search of her mother she also finds her father and returns to her home town with a reluctant but greater understanding of her mother’s relationship with her apparently uncaring drunkard of a husband. With the threat of another war hanging over them, will Violet and her father ever be able to find a way to make peace with each other? ~ Jacqueline Everett, author of The Road To Waterloo

The Peacemaker is a deftly handled historical novel with a modern twist. It has a superb sense of time and place, excellent characterisation and sparkling dialogue. The parallel story of what happened to her mother makes the plight, and eventual triumph over adversity of the main character, Violet, all the more moving. ~ Carole Bromley, author of The Stonegate Devil

In The Peacemaker, the lost world of the 1930s, with a second world war imminent, is vividly evoked through ordinary lives. And I am left wondering what happened to these people. Will we hear more of their stories? ~ Sue Knight, author of Waiting For Gordo