Time & Tide

by Marie Keates

May 1940 — Unwilling to let the Navy requisition his yacht, Bert persuades a group of trusted friends to sail to France and help him evacuate the Expeditionary Force. Could two little yachts and a rag-tag band of old soldiers and sailors make a difference? Finding Bert’s son, George, amongst hundreds of thousands of men on the Dunkirk beach will take a miracle. Getting home again will need more than divine intervention.

Martha has always indulged Hariph’s whims and let him go his own way. The mission is madness, and she's afraid he won’t survive, but her husband’s death isn’t the only thing she fears while she waits for his return. Hariph is keen to help Bert. He sees the trip as an adventure, but soon realises it is more risky than any of them expected. Might it be a fool’s errand that will see them all killed?

As Lance Corporal George Porter heads towards the coast, he’s forced to take charge and face choices he's ill-equipped to make. He’s terrified, but his men depend on him, so he has to keep his head. Meeting Cadge, a self-assured and resourceful Corporal, on the beach, is a stroke of luck, but his story doesn’t quite ring true. Is his eagerness to help genuine, or does he have an ulterior motive?

247 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 31, 2023

About the author

Marie Keates is a writer, blogger and walker, who can’t resist the mystery of an unexplored trail and is mad about history. She lives in Southampton, and has spent much of her life working in the travel industry and writing copy on such diverse subjects as travel, canals, running and coffee. Her interest in Southampton’s history has made her blog, www.iwalkalone.co.uk popular with local history groups, ex-Sotonians and visitors to the city. Her novels, Plagued, Land Fit For Heroes, Seventh Daughter and A Dish Best Served Cold were inspired by research into her family history and stories she heard at her grandfather’s knee.

Reviews

[Terry Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

The time and place of this book, about the evacuation of Allied forces from Dunkirk in early summer 1940, is so well rounded out, as the author alternates between the story of the Hariph, Bert and Denis, who set out to take part in the rescue effort, of George and his friends in the Service Corps, trapped in the middle of enemy lines - and, lastly, the wives at home in Southampton, England. The family connections and histories are quite complicated, with many names to remember, but they began to slot into my head after the first couple of chapters - proof that they became three dimensional! The characters come from the author's previous series, so I did recognise some of them.

Marie Keates is something of an authority on the history of Southampton, and I liked reading such interesting detail as the delivery men at home using horses rather than vans because, unlike in the First World War, the horses had not been requisitioned, and fuel was hard to come by. I was struck by the people's innocence in this earlier age, despite all they had been through, and also by the fact that their values were focused on the health and safety of others as well as themselves; a less self-centred era.

Time & Tide is a story about the bonds of friendship as well as family, about self-sacrifice, courage and faith. Now and again I felt opportunities to create atmosphere and tension were missed, though this is a wartime family drama about the people of Southampton, inspired by many of the author's own relatives, rather than a dark action adventure; as such, I'm sure it will hit the mark for many readers.

[Will Tinkham · Rating 5 out of 5]

TIME & TIDE is the first book in Marie Keates' The Wartime Saga series, but still shares characters from the earlier Between the Wars Saga, so if the name Arthur Fisk sends a chill up your spine, brace yourself.
It's Dunkirk, we've all heard about it, but not like this. You're on Bert's tiny yacht, riddled with bullet holes from Nazi strafing, barely afloat and barely manned with wounded crew members and Hariph falling overboard.
And let's not forget the women back home, sick with worry, no idea if they'll ever see their men again. Amid the chaos, Keates keeps intriguing and very human storylines running throughout. Wartime indeed. And a brilliant novel.