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The Orchard on Fire is an evocative novel about a fifties childhood. Shena Mackaycreates a vibrant Kentish community with brutal parents and teachers and dangerous paedophiles lurking in a rural Kentish community with Virol adverts, butterfly buns and platform tickets peppering the narrative.

April visits the village many years later and what she finds brings back vivid and rich memories of years of her childhood spent there.

In the fifties, Percy and Betty Harlency took over the Copper Kettle Tearoom and their daughter, April, was transported into a new world. Friendship with Ruby, the brutal local pub-owner’s daughter changed April’s life.

The two are inseparable and we share their adventures, including the death of a visiting professor and the witnessing of the strange behaviour of village inhabitants.

Superficially idyllic, the community in fact harbours adults who are too concerned with propriety to see the potential dangers in their community. We are left feeling that these children are lucky survivors of a world where the truth never really surfaces.

Tension is maintained in the story by the creepy figure of Mr Greenridge who has designs on April and the reader is on edge, longing to alert the naive parents to the threat he poses. We are left feeling how important it is for children to be warned how dangerous adults can be.

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