Getting ready for April!
Smoky House by Elizabeth Goudge
“The village of Faraway lay in a sheltered valley between round green hills. Its cottages were built of white-washed stone and thatched with golden straw, and they stood in gardens full of bushes of scarlet fuchsia and purple Veronica…”
🌿 Elizabeth Goudge, Smoky House
Goudge’s Smugglers’ adventure
In April we will be reading Smoky House, another children’s book that Elizabeth Goudge‘s wrote about the West Country. We learn about a mysterious fiddler, cozy family life in a Devon inn, the smugglers who kept Britain full of French brandy, and a young squire who learns a good lesson in the end.
Join us in April!
Goudge wrote this tale as inspired by a local inn, Smoky House, near her home in Marldon, UK.
Jacket copy for Smoky House:
“This is a romance of smuggling along the Devon coast during the last century. The Treguddick family of three girls and two boys, who live in the Smoky-House inn at Faraway, are caught up in some very strange adventures, dating from the arrival of a mysterious wandering fiddler at the door one summer evening.
It would be quite wrong to give away any more details, but the story is exciting enough and a valiant part in it is played by the family dogs, Spot and Sausage also by Mathilda, a donkey with an unusually tractable nature. The whole tale is imbued with a golden magic that will be familiar to all who know Miss Goudge's other books a magic that brings the hazy scenes of daily life long years ago into sharp and vivid focus for the readers of today.”
Bookchat
I will be sharing setting photos, book quotes, characters and scenes all month here in posts, and we will enjoy discussing it together live on Zoom on Wednesday, April 30th at 3PM EST. Hope you can join us!
Get your copy
You can find Smoky House in paperback and/or hard cover at: Blackwells, Amazon, EBay, Thrift Books or Abebooks, or Girls Gone By Publishers.
Goudge Readalong list for 2025
“…Smoky House the village inn, was in the centre of the village, and close to it was the Church, with a tall tower from whose top you could gaze out over the round green hills...”
🌿 Elizabeth Goudge, Smoky House
I have my copy 📚.
I'm planning to reread Smoky House with you. 🙂