Willowmere Refuge: Two Sisters, One Promise, and a War Between Them

Hamburg, 1938. Ten-year-old Annelise boards a train for England with her five-year-old sister, Liesel, leaving their Jewish parents behind as Nazi persecution closes in. Entrusted with keeping Liesel safe, Annelise carries an even greater responsibility: find a way to reunite their family.

After a bewildering journey through the Netherlands and across the English Channel, the sisters are welcomed into Havenbrook House in North Yorkshire. Their foster mothers offer security and kindness, but England cannot quiet Annelise’s fear for the parents she left behind. She writes tirelessly to the refugee committee, clinging to every fragment of hope even after war makes escape from Germany nearly impossible.

As the sisters adjust to unfamiliar customs, wartime restrictions, and life far from home, their different ways of enduring separation begin to emerge. Liesel finds friendship and moments of joy, while Annelise remains driven by duty and the promise she made on a dark railway platform.

Willowmere Refuge is an emotional work of historical fiction about displacement, sisterhood, courage, and the fierce determination to keep a family connected across the divisions of war.