Book Descriptions
for The Foreshadowing by Marcus Sedgwick
From The United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY)
The Foxes are a well-to-do British family: respected medical doctor, sub servient mother, two sons at university, and seventeen-year old Alexandra. Tragically, Alexandra can envision the future—but only the imminent deaths of people she encounters. This becomes especially relevant when her brothers enlist in the British army at the outbreak of World War I. She foresees first her elder’s, then younger brother’s, deaths. Alexandra secretly departs for France in the guise of a volunteer nurse—hoping to safeguard her younger brother. The Foreshadowing can be paired with Iain Lawrence’s Lord of the Nutcracker Men (2001) for a look at the sordid—and more primitive— aspects of war. 2007 USBBY Outstanding International Books List. lmp
Originally published by Orion Children’s Books Great Britain, in 2005.
From the Publisher
17 year old Sasha is a well-to-do, sheltered-English girl. Just as her brother Thomas longs to be a doctor, she wants to nurse, yet girls of her class don't do that kind of work. But as the war begins and the hospitals fill with young soldiers, she gets a chance to help. But working in the hospital confirms what Sasha has suspected--she can see when someone is going to die. Her premonitions show her the brutal horrors on the battlefields of the Somme, and the faces of the soldiers who will die. And one of them is her brother Thomas.
Pretending to be a real nurse, Sasha goes behind the front lines searching for Thomas, risking her own life as she races to find him, and somehow prevent his death.