The Bird in the Tree

"I love these people too much to let them be unhappy for long," wrote Elizabeth Goudge of her favorite fictional characters, the Eliot family.

Goudge carries the Eliot family saga through two more books, PILGRIM'S INN and THE HEART OF THE FAMILY, but it is in this first book that we learn the strange history of the family home, so central to the story that it becomes almost a character in its own right.

"You will love this Hampshire coast, the little village and above all, the kind old house. What matters most is that forgotten stretch of marshland, where a man's spirit may rest and grow whole again." (Boston Transcript)