<p><b><i>22 Britannia Road</i> by Amanda Hodgkinson is a heartbreaking and powerful novel about wartime secrets and the difficulties of adjusting to postwar life</b><br><br>It is 1946 and Silvana and eight-year-old Aurek board a ship that will take them from Poland to England. Silvana has not seen her husband Janusz in six years, but, they are assured, he has made them a home in Ipswich.<br><br>However, after living wild in the forests for years, carrying a terrible secret, all Silvana knows is that she and Aurek are survivors. Everything else is lost. While Janusz, a Polish soldier who has criss-crossed Europe during the war, hopes his family will help put his own dark past behind him.<br><br>But the war and the years apart will always haunt each of them unless they together confront what they were compelled to do to survive.<br><br><br>''The characters are so convincing and the writing''s so unshowily accomplished that it soon becomes something gripping. An admirable debut'' Daily Ma