Captain Laurence Greene was gassed at Ypres. He takes ten years to die. With her fiance, Joseph, lost in France, Effie Shaw spends a decade as Laurence's cook. They share a roof, a sweet tooth and a taste for pastoral romances. Propriety, however, prescribes that their sharing end there. It is a surprise to Effie, then, when Laurence bequeaths her a railway ticket, the deeds to a tea shop and a declaration of his unspoken love. The terms of Laurence's will require that Effie must travel to Ypres and visit her fiance's grave. As Laurence had always told it, Joseph met his end with a show of heroics. But, in carrying out Laurence's last requests, and following his wartime diary, Effie is to discover something shocking. Joseph wasn't quite as heroic as she was told ? and he also isn't quite so dead. The stories of three soldiers connect through Laurence's diary. As Effie travels on, from Passchendaele to Paris, these men become linked together once again. A decade on from the Armistice, is the war really over at all? Effie is about to realise just how many echoes - and untidy ends - 1918 has left behind. AUTHOR: Caroline Scott is originally from Lancashire. She has a PhD in History, a fascination with the First World War and a house full of khaki-coloured bric-a-brac. In addition to Those Measureless Fields, she is currently working on two non-fiction projects for Pen and Sword ? a history of the Women's Land Army during the First World War and a book about the Manchester 'Bantam' Battalion. Caroline lives in France and possesses more trench art than is probably tasteful.
