Product Description

It is 1946, and most members of the Adams family who had been serving with the forces begin to come home. But grandson Daniel is still serving in an army unit out of Palestine and his fiancee, Patsy, is counting the days until his return.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #245335 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 381 pages

From the Back Cover
It is 1946, and with the war at last at an end the younger members of the Adams family parted for the duration begin to come home. Boots is reunited with Polly and their twins, his son Tim returns to the welcoming arms of brave Felicity, and Bobby and Helene, their dangerous work in occupied France at an end, arrive home at last. Chinese Lady can resume her role as matriarch of an ever-growing clan. But grandson Daniel is still serving in an army unit out in Palestine, where his life is in considerable danger, and his American fiancée, Patsy, counts the days until his return.

While the new Labour government struggles with the problems of a country drained by the war, Sammy pursues his business interests with post-war energy and unfailing optimism. Many new family members - small babies, sweethearts, husbands and wives - join in as the whole Adams family comes together as never before to celebrate peacetime.

About the Author
Mary Jane Staples lives in Surrey and is the author of twenty-four previous novels about cockney life, many of which feature the well-loved Adams family.

Excerpted from The Homecoming by Mary Jane Staples. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Prologue
Germany, April, 1945
The Russians were in Berlin itself, the Americans and British advancing on the Elbe, west of Berlin.
An SS officer, one Major Erich Kirsten, notorious for speeding up the process of extermination in concentration camps, escaped the closing Russian trap in Berlin and succeeded in reaching Belsen. There he ordered the camp commandant, Kramer, to finish off all surviving inmates before forward units of the advancing British arrived.
Too late.
The British were there in the afternoon, aghast and outraged at what they beheld: mounds of dead inmates and hundreds of dying; scores of totally enfeebled men and women who were merely skin and bone and a great pit in which lay a mass of naked corpses. Typhus and other diseases were rampant, revolting odours spilling from huts filled with the dead and dying. The SS personnel of the camp included women as disgustingly callous as their male counterparts.
Major Kirsten, along with Kramer and every other German there, was placed under arrest by soldiers ferociously inclined to shoot them all on the spot.
Major Kirsten, however, did not seem in the least perturbed by the searing animosity of his captors. Nothing, as far as he was concerned, warranted his arrest. He was a man who dutifully obeyed the orders of his superiors in Berlin.
The next day a British staff officer, Colonel Robert Adams, arrived to investigate the horrors of mass murder. His inspection of the camp and its broken, suffering inmates caused him unimaginable revulsion and anger. How was it possible for men and women to do this to other human beings? He advanced slowly along the line of SS men and women guards, looking into their faces, faces that seemed to shrink in an effort to disappear. He guessed, however, that they were uneasy not about what they had done to the inmates, but what might now be done to them. The women were coarse female louts, most of them bulky and bulging in their uniforms. One woman did meet his direct glance, just for a second or so, a woman whose eyes were reflective not of shame but a kind of sneering defiance. He stopped to look her up and down, his contempt and disgust reducing her to lip-biting discomfort, and then walked on.
With Commandant Kramer already on his way to be tried as a war criminal, Colonel Adams interrogated Major Kirsten, whose demeanour was that of an untroubled man.
‘What is your connection with this revolting camp?’
In fluent English, Kirsten replied, ‘Who wishes to know?’
‘I do.’
‘I have given you my name and rank, and as a prisoner of war that is all I am required to give.’
‘You are not a prisoner of war, you are a miserable specimen of total inhumanity, a wormlike creature of Himmler’s, and if you don’t answer my questions, I’ll have you delivered to whatever inmates of this camp have strength enough to tear you to pieces.’
‘Herr Colonel,’ said Kirsten, a sharp-featured man in his thirties, ‘I’m not prepared to end my days in the stinking hands of Europe’s filth, and will tell you that in every aspect of my work for the good of the Third Reich, I have committed no crimes. I have only ever obeyed orders. You have no right, under any military law, to arrest any soldier for obeying orders.’
Deep grey eyes showed the blue of razor-sharp steel. The eyes regarded him, looked him over from head to foot, and stripped him of his untroubled air. Kirsten sensed the increased threat of a lynching at the hands of Jewish inmates, and he visibly twitched.
‘I’m listening to an animal calling itself a soldier?’ said Colonel Adams. ‘According to depositions from several of the camp’s guards, you came here to arrange the massacre of all inmates still alive.’
‘I was obeying orders from Berlin. Obedience to our superiors is the first principle of our service to the Third Reich.’
‘I wonder,’ said Colonel Adams, ‘whenever you are out of that uniform, do you walk on two legs or four?’
‘I request, Herr Colonel, as an officer of the SS, to be spared your insults.’
‘I take the view that it’s impossible to insult a piece of filthy garbage. But you’ll get a trial before you’re hanged, and I hope to God you take time to choke to death, along with other animals who, like you, have reduced innocent human beings to not knowing if they are human beings at all.’
Major Kirsten, now a dusky red, obviously considered this denunciation totally unjustified. He again insisted he had only ever obeyed orders.
‘Further, Herr Colonel, we are arguing about opinions. Your opinion, I suggest, is that these filthy creatures are on our level. My opinion, shared by every true Aryan, is that they are subhumans whose objective is to contaminate the whole world. The whole world should thank us for all we have so far done in reducing their numbers.’
Colonel Adams, tolerant of common failings, regarded this infamous servant of Himmler with a freezing disgust that matched the feelings of the contingent of sickened British soldiers.
At the liberated Dachau concentration camp, American soldiers, appalled and outraged at the sight of a huge mound of naked, skeleton-like corpses, meted out summary justice on the spot. They shot to death more than a hundred SS men.
Here at Belsen, Colonel Adams might have shot Major Kirsten himself. Instead, he forced him to join the men and women guards in the gruesome task of burying the mounds of dead, a punitive exercise that lasted many days. It turned Major Kirsten into a livid, filth-encrusted spectacle of degradation, took the blood from the inhuman faces of the guards and made grey, haggard creatures of them.
Subsequently, they were all despatched to prison under escort, to be tried as war criminals along with Commandant Kramer. Colonel Adams frankly hoped every last one of them would be hanged. He was not advised that during the difficult journey to Nuremberg gaol, two of the SS guards, a man and a woman, escaped. And so did Major Kirsten.

Customer Reviews

All the things that you wished for, for the Adams Family.
While leaving us in a state of wanting, from the Year of Victory this new title from Mary Jane does not let us down. A heart felt story of love and joy at the end of the war while still making the reader want more. I could not put the book down, and at times whilst the discription's of the court scene's turned my stomach, and when members of the family are in danger making me want to skip a couple of chapters, to make sure that they are OK, I felt compelled to carry on to the end, turning each page one by one.

Again the characters seem life like and actually make you feel that you know the families relating to each chapter. For the last few years Mary Jane, has played a part in my life and with this new book she does not disappoint. All the while making you feel like you are actually stood next to the characters and are watching the scene unfold before your eyes.

Boots as ever making you feel joyous and even when he takes the fall, always giving you hope that he will pull through, for although the family take "Chinese Lady" for the head of the family, in a true readers eyes it has to be Boots that is.

All the usual family characters appear, if at times not as much as you'd want, I for one would like to know how the younger characters are coping with life and families that we have met are getting on. This I feel is the only thing letting the book down.

Wonderfully written and I for one am dreading the end of the Adams family.

Excellent story continuing the lives of the Adams family.
Once again another book which I could not put down once I started reading it. Everything else had to wait while I had to find out how the Adams family tried to adjust to life after the war. As always it was so easy to read about so many family members and follow their lives. Once again a very enjoyable read and I can not wait for the next installment.

Absolutely Brilliant!
Mary Jane Staples does it again! As with all her other books I just couldn't put it down, the way the family interacts with each other is just wonderful. I can't wait for Sons and Daughters.