The Only Blue Door

by Joan Fallon

🎧Listening Length = 11 hours and 59 minutes

In 1940s London, young Maggie’s world shatters amid war’s chaos. With their father dead and mother missing, she and her siblings are sent as migrants to Australia — only to face heartache and separation. As Maggie clings to hope, can she reunite her family? A heartrending family saga set during World War II.

It is September 1940, Maggie and her young siblings, Grace and Billy, are living in the East End of London with their mother. Their father has been killed at Dunkirk and their mother goes into hospital to have her fourth child, leaving the children with a neighbour. In one of the worst bombing raids of the war their home is destroyed and the neighbour is killed. Bewildered and frightened, the children wander the streets until they are taken in by some nuns. But their problems are not over; no-one can trace their mother and, labelled as orphans, they are sent as child migrants to Australia.

The novel traces their adventures in their new country, the homesickness, the heartbreak when Billy is separated from his sisters and the loneliness of life in a cold and unfeeling orphanage. Eventually the children make new lives for themselves, but Maggie is still convinced that her mother is alive and once she is old enough, begins to search for her.

Based on the experiences of real people, this novel reflects the attitudes of the day towards child migration during and after the Second World War.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, World War II, Historical

450 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Joan Fallon was born in Dumfries, Scotland but spent most of her adult life in England. Teacher, management trainer and business woman, she moved to Spain at the beginning of the new millennium and became a writer. Her first published work was a social history, 'Daughters of Spain', inspired by the women she met in her adopted home. Her subsequent books too have grown out of her experiences living and working in Spain. She is especially interested in Spanish history and has set her novels in periods as distinct as the Golden Age of the Moorish conquest and the Spanish Civil War. She is a member of the Society of Authors and the Alliance of Independent Authors.

Reviews

[D.w. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Only Blue Door is a side of Historical Fiction that I usually don't delve into. Ms. Fallon does not talk about the events of WWII in regards to battle, or the soldiers that typically I would read when looking into the era. She takes on the challenge of what the plight of children were in the war town world of the era.

This is a subject matter that is handled with deftness. And when telling a tale from the views of children, we of adults must take extra care to work towards truth while telling such. Childhood is many years and miles from us, and to remember that period of our lives, as well as to cast the protagonists in a time of great personal tragedies, takes all the skill of master.

Ms. Fallon gives us a premise that requires some suspension of disbelief, though with the pandemonium of the Blitz as a backdrop, and a bureaucracy little ready to deal with the massive amounts of tragedy that was swamping them, one can take on faith that such plot devices as Ms. Fallon employs could easily have existed. The Catholic Church takes in on the chin in The Only Blue Door, so if you have strong religious feelings, be prepared for some harsh realities of how children perceive the strictness that the church may have embraced. It is not the Church of Padre Rufino Niccacci of Assisi.

But our journey, like the branches of a vine that twist and turn and rewind back onto itself, comes to fruition. It gives us glimpses into different parts of the war that have little bearing on the battles, except perhaps there outcomes and as minor subplots. We see the parts of the world that equate to A Town Called Alice of Australia during the war, and after when scarcity, little discussed in near all tales of the period, is certainly a theme that has to be given credence to bear on the tale that has evolved in this page turner.

Pacing is like the hundred yard dash, not in it's brevity, but that as the war begins, the tale is slow to show us what will happen, for the tale is not of the war, but of the children who will grow as the war continues and ends. Here as in a race, those first steps from a standing start are slow, but as we near the end, the runner gives his all and increases his effort going his fastest. And in such a tale, reaching the climax, a lot must happen at once to bring in those pieces of the vine back to a semblance of beauty.

For those who would like to view more to their history than one battle or another, one tale of heroism involving the soldiers, sailors and airmen, and even adults of World War II, then this tale of three heroic children might be something to sit down with and begin. A chance to see more of the world than you might ever have imagined existed when such monumental events were taking place, yet for the heroes of this tale, these were the most monumental moments of their lives.

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to Goodreads for the chance to read this book.

Fantastic read! Very emotional on several levels; growing up as a girl and the choices made for me,and being a parent and choices I made for my kids.

Takes place in London just prior to the blitz by the Germans. Just when you think Governments can't do anything more stupid than what had already been done…to read this WW11 novel based on experiences of real people, just brings up more unjust behavior from bureaucrats. There are characters that give us hope for humanity.

How did they have the right to judge which children should be shipped off to Australia and which ones had the right to return? How maddening for the families which were broken up during this time period.

[Evie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was fortunate enough to recieve a copy of this novel as a Goodreads first prize winner and I thouroughly enjoyed reading it.

It was brilliantly written and very informative. I had never even considered the hardships of child migration during the second world war and this tale provided a truely gripping and insightful view into the lives of those who suffered because of child migration. It was a tale of cruelty, hardship and determination and I could not put the book down.

Thank you Goodreads for giving me the chance to read this book, it definitley deserves a five star rating! I hope to read more of Fallon's works in the near future.

[gj indieBRAG · Rating 5 out of 5]

We are proud to announce that THE ONLY BLUE DOOR by Joan Fallon is a B.R.A.G.Medallion Honoree. This tells readers that this book is well worth their time and money!

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this book about 3 siblings who are sent to Australia for safety after they are deemed orphans. It is a tale of their struggles & once they arrive in their new home. I wish the author had written more regarding their reunion with their mother who although believed dead was not. I think she could make a 2nd book with that story.

[Cindy Woods · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very real and sad

This is an exceptionally well-written story about the separation of a family in WWII England.

The events that occur, one after the other like Dominos, are unbelievable but based on true events. It was very difficult, at times, to imagine the horrific chain of misunderstandings during wartime that led to the separation of three children from their mother.

The author brings you into a time of confusion and fight for survival during the air raids on towns. The descriptions of life in such an abnormal setting as seen through the eyes of children is stark and real. The confusion that results and decisions made on behalf of these children who become separated from their mother is beyond comprehension at times. I had to remind myself that it was a different era when adults didn't listen to children and children didn't question adults.

The drastic decision to send these children to Australia on a ship during wartime to be placed in separate orphanages is so cruel. The idea of "family" is not considered important, and the Catholic orphanages are like prisons with no care for the emotional and psychological affects on children. It is so sad.

Joan Fallon creates a story that is very real and raw as seen, mostly, through the eyes of the children. Lives are torn apart and the needs, hopes, traumas and realities of having no say in their lives and futures is destroyed but for a very few kind souls along the way.

This one will grip your heart and squeeze! I very highly recommend this beautifully written book to readers.

[Lois · Rating 5 out of 5]

Based on actual events in World War II, this is a heartbreaking story of how the war, circumstances, and money all played a part in the separation of three young children from their mother. Their father had just been killed at Dunkirk, and the mother had gone in the hospital to give birth to her fourth child. A good friend and neighbor, Kate Kelley, was keeping Maggie, Billy, and Grace until their mother could give birth and come home. Kate had taken the children to her church, and left them at Sunday School while she visited their mom. Kate was on her way back to the children when the air raid siren sounded. Kate was killed, the entire neighborhood destroyed, and chaos followed. The children had been taken to the bomb shelter by their teacher. Afterward, they went to find Kate, but finding everything was destroyed and Kate was dead, not knowing what else to do, Maggie takes Billie and Grace to the hospital to find their mother. They arrived only to find that the mothers had been evacuated to another location. Not knowing what else to do, Maggie returned to Kate's Catholic Church to find Father O'Malley. He took them to the orphanage, and the next day the nuns declared them orphans and they found themselves on a ship to Australia. Maggie did not believe her mother was dead. The mother, in London, did not believe her children were dead and spent the rest of her life looking for them. The character development in this book is excellent which makes it easy to read. It is shocking to the system some of the actual things children have gone through in their lives.

[Chapter · Rating 4 out of 5]

FROM GOODREADS: Imagine you are a twelve-year-old girl; you have a happy life and a family that loves you, then bit by bit your life disintegrates and you find yourself alone, thousands of miles from home. It is September 1940, Maggie and her young siblings, Grace and Billy, are living in the East End of London with their parents. Their father has been killed at Dunkirk and their mother goes into hospital to have her fourth child, leaving the children with a neighbour. In one of the worst bombing raids of the war their home is destroyed and the neighbour is killed. Bewildered and frightened, the children wander the streets until they are taken in by some nuns. But their problems are not over; no-one can trace their mother and, labelled as orphans, they are sent as child migrants to Australia. The story traces their adventures in their new country, the homesickness, the heartbreak when Billy is separated from his sisters and the loneliness of life in a cold and unfeeling orphanage. Eventually the children make new lives for themselves, but Maggie is still convinced that her mother is alive and once she is old enough, begins to search for her.


The story, a work of fiction, is based on the experiences of real people and reflects the attitudes of the day to child migration during and after the Second World War.

[Helen Hollick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has received a Discovering Diamonds Review:

Helen Hollick
founder #DDRevs

"Ms Fallon is a competent writer. Her characters are well-developed, her prose is fluid and her descriptions bring the various settings to life."

[Sandy Sullivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the reasons I only gave this book 3 stars is because it was 450 pages and should have or could have been edited to about 300. The story is about the lives of a Mom and her 4 children during and after WWII. The are bombed out of their house in England while Mom is having her 4th baby at the hospital. Dad has been killed in the war, so the children are basically on their own. Their home has been destroyed as well as their caretaker’s home and the fact that she has perished in the bombing. The three kids are placed in a Catholic orphanage and eventually sent via a ship to Australia. It is there that they become separated with the boy going to a boy orphanage and the two young girls going to live with nuns. All three children, as well as all of those living in these places, are horribly abused. My question always has been why these nuns, priests and brothers persisted in abusing sexually, physically and mentally as a way of making these children learn. They eventually are reunited with their Mom, her new husband and the baby, who they had never seen before. But 450 pages is not needed to tell this simple, yet horrific tale of the suffering these children endured over many years. And if I read one more time about someone suggesting that they ‘sit down and have a cuppa’ I was going to put the book down forever. A cup of tea is not the answer to all of these problems they were trying to solve and every chapter described a little rest period with ‘a cuppa’!

[Julie Rothenfluh · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 young children, whose father died at Dunkirk and whose mother is in the hospital giving birth, are left on their own when a bomb destroys their house and kills the neighbor who was caring for them. They end up declared orphans are sent off to orphanages in Australia, a practice I’d never heard of. It was mostly a good book. While I don’t entirely buy the premise, it’s plausible. And, while I’m sure bad things happened to children in such situations, it felt a bit like checking off a list - ok, all the adults are heartless, children are poorly fed, beaten, and used for hard labor, etc. Meanwhile, in England, the children are presumed to be dead so their mother must carry on somehow. As the war ends and Maggie is more of an age to find out what happened to her siblings, the story shifts to a tale of bureaucracy, trying to find someone who can locate all the players and bring them together. The determination of Maggie, the oldest, to try to reunite her family kept me interested, along with her firm belief that their mother was still alive. What rang truest, for me, were the last two lines of the book: “Does she (Maggie) want to blame anyone for what happened? Yes, she would like to blame someone but what good would it do now?” This is often the case in life - you can spend your time blaming or just get on with living.

[Cam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was something I really did not know anything about. During WWII many children were shipped to Australia from England to keep them safe. Many of them stayed and never returned home.

Maggie and her young siblings, Grace and Billy, are living in the East End of London with their parents. Their father has been killed at Dunkirk and their mother goes into hospital to have her fourth child, leaving the children with a neighbor. In one of the worst bombing raids of the war their home is destroyed and the neighbor is killed.

Bewildered and frightened, the children are taken in by some nuns. No one can locate their mother and she is presumed dead.

They are sent as child migrants to Australia. The story traces their arrival in their new country, the homesickness, the heartbreak, the separation, and the loneliness of life in a cold and unfeeling orphanage. Somehow, Maggie must try to do all she can to bring them together again as a family.

This was a fast paced read, and an interesting topic that I felt the author had researched well.

[Angela Corley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Family torn apart by war. Perseverance reunites after years and at what cost.

A book that describes what it was like to live and survive through the Blitz during WWII in London. Chaos separates a close family for years. The children are sent to a Catholic orphanage where the treatment of the children is hard to read at times and even more difficult to understand with it being nuns who abuse these children is even more disturbing. But perseverance from the mother and oldest daughter reunites them but, at a very high cost for the youngest daughter. Based upon true events, a story of family, loss, love, war, and the consequences that can come at no fault of your own when the world is in the most of chaos. I gave it four stars, the story itself is sad, but it also shows the depth of courage of average kids determined to have a better life against all odds.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Careless decisions made during the London Blitz lead to three young children being sent to Australia as orphans while their mother is detained in a London hospital. What follows is the heartbreaking story of those three children and their mother as they deal with the pain and frustrations of an incomprehensible separation for the remaining years of the war. Catholic orphanages do not come off well in the account (as they do not in the recent disclosures of native American children in similar institutions in Canada and the U.S. at the time). I cared about the characters in Fallon's book and was impressed by the level of detail the author included to make the various settings come to life. My copy had quite a few typos and misspellings, which were a distraction from the exemplary storytelling. I also wish the author had discussed how much was truly historical vs. fiction.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read about children affected by the chaos of war.

World War II London was an inferno with Germany dropping bombs daily. How these people survived these first years is a miracle and a testament of their fortitude to not break against a powerful enemy. The need to save the children by sending them away was an interesting solution. Besides sending them to other parts of England, they were shipped off to Canada and Australia.This story follows the struggles of each character as the three siblings are mistakenly labeled orphans, shipped away, misunderstood and and mistreated. A part of history I had not known before. A very interesting read that moves right along with a high level of suspense.A

[Janice Baldwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not orphans

This book introduced me to a part of World War 2 history with which I was not familiar. I had heard about children from London being sent to the countryside to keep them from the Blitz and the doodlebugs; but I was unaware that children were shipped to Canada, South Africa, and Australia. Through the stories of Maggie, Billy, and Grace and of their mother Irene we learn of some of the horrors of that period. The children are sent to orphanages where some of the religious who should have taken care of them in positive ways instead abused them physically, mentally, and emotionally and played out their personal depravities in innocents entrusted to their care. It is a heart wrenching book!

[Ted Duke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quick review. Highly recommended, you will fall in love with the children. Ms. Fallon makes them REAL!

This book tells a sad story of three children mistakenly sent to Australia during the London Blitz of 1940 when it was thought they were orphans. Truly a sad story, and based on actual events, but only one of many thousands of similar events. Reading some history about that period will help you appreciate this book even more.

As you read this book, keep in mind what conditions were like, what was expected to happen soon, and what might have happened to the children (and to those who were really orphans) IF they had been kept in London.

[Barbara Reeves-Cohen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Only Blue Door - a hidden scar of war

This is an interesting book but not an intellectual one; however, it brings the reader into the lives of a family torn apart by the results of war and mishandling of children who could not care for themselves when separated from their mother. The result was a series of errors on the part of authorities, who thought they were doing the right thing for the children. All this caused undue hardship for the children and their mother and 6 years of struggle to find and bring them together again.

[Becki Basley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only blue door by Joan Fallon (Audiobook Read On Everand app)


A story about three siblings who were caught in the Blitz in World War II with their mom in the hospital with their baby brother and their caretaker killed. Thinking they were orphans they were put on a transport to orphanages in Australia. And how they all found each other again.

The story highlights the very real and troubling history of these transports and the horrific treatment that many children faced at the orphanages. It also highlights the politics behind it all.

[Bonnie K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this story, I was moved by it and even cried. The poor family, children separated for years. The mean nuns, church people Brothers (in Catholic fate) how they treated these children, makes you sick.
I do wish the the writer, wrote a chapter on the mother finally meeting the kids now grown after all these years and going to see the youngest at the orphanage . Felt short changed on that one. Good story over all but very sad.

[maria vanderroer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazon customer

I have read some books about the illegal immigration to Australia by volunteer organizations.. Boy that Catholic church and their immigration process needs to be scrutinize. I am glad that they were found out and they were accountable for it. I still can imagine there are scars from their cruelty.. They were very young children and so badly treated. Good book. It put a face to the characters.

[Mary Sue Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful Novel

I thoroughly enjoyed this historical fiction novel about English children separated from their mother during a bombing. It is hard to imagine something g so heart wrenching happening. It was difficult to put this novel down. For days, I thought about this story of separation.

[Mary Gaut · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great Read

A most enlightening and heart rendering account of three sibling children mistakenly evacuated to Australian orphanages from London during WWW II. The story is captivating from the onset and the characters are realistic and we'll developed. I couldn't put this one down!

[Cora Bills McCalla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good title, very appropriate.

I feel the writing was a bit juvenile, not a lot of description. However the subject is interesting and I had no idea sending children to Australia was something done during the war. And the fact Australia continued to seek immigrants was also new to me. The author certainly did portray the love this family had for one and other.

[Mary Ann Plahitko · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did not know about the displacement of children duringWWIII. This true story is about a family caught up in a politically motivated scheme to send orphans of the war to Australia from London. It will break your heart, and yet, underlying the sadness is a story that will make you smile at the strength of the human spirit. I will miss the characters who became friends to me. It is a must read.

[Patricia Ruiz Steele · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.0 out of 5 stars
Absorbing and interesting
Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2021
This book was emotional and well written. I had no idea that the English sent their children to Canada and Australia to keep them safe during WWII. The children in this historical fiction were well characterized and their plight was sad. I felt their mother’s pain also.

[ann betts · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only blue door

A good story about children who were sent away from Britain during the second d world war.It was a sad and abusive time for many of the children in the orphanages,

[Joan Novatt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful story if only it weren’t true! It kept my interest from page 1 until the end. Just would have loved the story to continue a little more before the epilogue. The author wrote it so well that you were sad when they were sad and happy when they were happy!

[Marcia · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you love historical fiction, this book will not disappoint. Due to a lack of communication, and the blitz, 3 children get sent off to Australian during the war. The story of Maggie, Billy and Grace will move you to tears. Highly recommend.

[Kathryn Spurgeon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Touching story

The fate of the orphaned children in England during WW2 has always been of interest to me. Especially those that were sent to places around the world. This story depicts the sadness and atrocities very well. For that reason, it is definitely worth reading.