A spoiler-free look at Keep the Home Fires Burning, the literary sequels to the Home Fires TV series

Many historical novels have been transformed into films and TV miniseries. Some of these films carry the novel’s characters beyond the original literary storyline. However, do you know of any other instances in which a popular TV series has been canceled, but the plot is continued in the form of a historical novel?

This is the case with Home Fires, set in the fictional English village of Great Paxford in Cheshire during WWII. It ran for two seasons (2015-16) on Britain’s ITV and on PBS Masterpiece in the US. The centerpiece is the Women’s Institute (WI), a real-life community organization in which women banded together to produce food on the home front, advocate for social causes, and support one another. Julie Summers’ nonfiction work Jambusters was the series inspiration.

Sadly, the series wasn’t renewed for a 3rd season. The decision was controversial not only because it had a large fan base but because the last episode ended on a cliffhanger, with a damaged Spitfire crashing into a house just as a woman inside was about to give birth.

So… what happens next?

I’m not about to tell you – but plans for Season 3 had been in the works at the time of the cancellation, so Simon Block, the show's creator and writer, turned the story into a four-part e-serial. The first installment is Spitfire Down!, and pharmacist Erica Campbell, as depicted by actress Frances Grey, is on the cover. It’s about 100 pages long, so I inhaled it over an hour on Sunday morning.

This won’t be a formal review, but I thought I’d list some observations I had reading the novella.

First, and maybe most obviously, the Keep the Home Fires Burning ebooks are written for existing fans; the storylines won’t make much sense to anyone who hasn’t seen the show. That said, much of the first 40% of the ebook is backstory to the plane crash, catching readers up on the action and fleshing out some characters and earlier scenes. The writing is streamlined and zips along, moving from one viewpoint to another just like the show would. After watching for two seasons, I know the characters’ personalities and physical attributes, which makes it easy to picture them in new scenarios. There is one character introduced for the first time, a newcomer from London, and it was odd to realize that she was the only person who I couldn’t imagine as easily.

Since it’s the nature of television dramas to show rather than tell, I found it interesting to learn more about the history of the WI through the book. I don’t recall its pacifist principles being strongly emphasized on screen, or that its members were conflicted about its goals. For example, in the book, fundraising for ambulances to help the injured is described as an acceptable task, but feeling runs against using the money for "tanks or planes to help bring hostilities to an end sooner rather than later.”

In addition, fiction on the page can get inside the women’s heads more than television can, and in this way, the domineering and proper Joyce Cameron’s personal history is made less opaque. Some aspects of her personality continue to grate, though.

The series focuses on the accomplishments of middle-aged women—a topic not often seen on TV. In addition, if the third season had been filmed, it would have added some racial diversity to the show. The first book introduces a minor subplot in which black Liverpudlians travel south through the countryside to escape bombings in the city—and run up against prejudice in Great Paxford. I suspect this theme will become more prominent in future installments. This is another reason to be regretful the series was canceled, although we have a chance to envision these scenarios and learn about the history through the books. The Mass Observation research project (in which ordinary citizens on the British home front recorded their thoughts) is another aspect of social history mentioned in the first novella, and it looks to play an even larger role in Part 2.

A sidenote: in the book, Sarah Collingbourne is listed as Sarah Colebourne (a mistake?).

Are there any other fans of Home Fires who are reading along, or who will be?  I’m hooked and will be following all four ebooks. They were released a month apart: two are out now (from Bonnier Zaffre) in e-format, the third will be out next week, and the fourth in October. In addition, the full contents will be published as a print book in October.