This is an auction for AN EPISODE OF SPARROWS, by Rumer Godden.

“It would be impossible for a reader not to feel better from reading the story...her rich understanding of human nature, her humour and her beautiful prose inevitably leave one aglow.” —Chicago Tribune

“A gentle, poignant story, poetically conceived with a fairy godmother ending. Recommended for all...” —Library Journal

“An extraordinarily gifted writer who manages to infuse her novels with a special magic of their own.”—Boston Herald

“May well prove the book of the year for those who are not ashamed to weep over the printed page...author Godden here tries her deft writing hand at landscaping a child’s heart.”—Time

“It is a sentimental tale, well told, with an unlikely and entirely satisfactory ending.”—The New Yorker

Amazon.com review:

"An emergency meeting of the Mortimer Square Garden Committee has been convened to discuss a most alarming matter: Someone has been digging in the garden and making off with buckets of dirt. Miss Angela Chesney is sure that a gang of boys from run-down Catford Street is to blame. But Angela’s sister, Olivia, isn’t so sure. Olivia has always wondered why the neighborhood children—the “sparrows” she sometimes watches from the window of her house—are kept out of the private garden. Don’t they have a right to enjoy the place, too? But neither Angela nor Olivia has any idea what sent the neighborhood waif Lovejoy Mason and her few friends in search of good, rich earth. Still less do they imagine where their investigation of the incident will lead them—to a struggling restaurant, a bombed-out church, and at the heart of it all, a hidden garden."

More very favourable reviews on Amazon.com.

Paperback 2014.

271 pages.

Very good condition.

The cost of shipping is $3.95.

There is of course no charge for shipping if you collect this book from my shop in Palmerston North following the auction.

Payment within seven days, please.