A family secret, hidden for a lifetime is revealed in this poignant and tragic tale of the life of Gerald Davies, the eponymous hero of the novel. His mother is committed into a mental asylum by a father having an affair with a woman twenty years his junior. Gerald is then forced to leave school to work at the local ironworks. In an effort to escape his past and a life someone else is forging for him, he joins the RAF, gaining a commission to become a Pilot Officer with 211 Squadron – one of ‘The Blenheim Boys.’
Before a posting to the Western desert campaign, he meets the love of his life, Susan Hall from Henley-on-Thames. The two enjoy a whirlwind romance before the war wrenches them apart. Gerald, posted to the Western Desert, takes with him the treasured photograph he has of the two of them taken on a boating trip on the Thames during the warm summer of 1940.
He keeps the photgraph close, believing it to be his lucky mascot, but tragedy is never that far away. He is shot down more than once and famously goes missing for several days, being shot down over Corfu. His family think he is dead, but Gerald and crew are being wined and dined by the people of Corfu and meet the famous Spiro Amerikanos, who famously befriended the Durrells on the island, when they were there in the 1930s. Gerald blames the fact he’d lost the photgraph as contributing to his bad luck that day. The press get hold of the story and it is seen far and wide across Britain.
Hospitalised in Egypt, after being concussed, he encounters Pilot Officer Roald Dahl, who has been injured in a crash in his Gloster Gladiator and the two share their worries about whether or not they’ll make it alive from the war.
Things get worse when Germany declares war on Greece on 6th April 1941.
On Easter Sunday, 13th April tragedy strikes when all six Blenheims sent to tackle the German pouring into Greece are shot down. Gerald is tragically killed.
The story is true and has taken the author a lifetime to research and write.
