Written for readers who have finished Book 1.
Hettie is the Pengelly farm's most disagreeable hen — big, rusty, bad-tempered, and nobody's friend, and the bird that pecks Edie the moment she arrives. She becomes an unlikely star of the letters home: "give Hettie my regards" turns into a fixed sign-off between Edie and her mother. The smallest and warmest of threads, holding a family together across the war's hardest weeks.