Timber Girls Books in Order

The Timber Girls series shines a light on the Women's Timber Corps, the young lumberjills who swapped city streets for forests so that men could be released for frontline service. It begins in 1942 with The Timber Girls, when nineteen year old Trixie Smith decides that stacking cabbages in a greengrocer's and playing piano in the local pub are not enough of a contribution to the war. After spotting a recruitment poster, she signs up and boards a train for Scotland.

Training turns out to be far tougher than she imagined. Trixie and the other recruits learn to fell trees, handle saws and work outdoors in all weathers, often up to their knees in mud. Along the way she forms a tight bond with fellow lumberjills Jo, Hen and Vi, women who carry their own private worries and reasons for leaving home. A brief but intense romance with American soldier Cy shows Trixie that the war can change hearts as quickly as it changes landscapes.

In Dream a Little Dream the friends are posted to the remote MacKay estate in the Scottish Highlands. Expecting sturdy male workers, the owner is not pleased when four young women turn up instead, and the girls quickly realise they must prove themselves all over again. The estate itself is run down and shadowed by family secrets, and as Trixie, Jo, Hen and Vi work to restore the woodlands they also begin to confront the parts of their pasts they hoped they had left behind.

You Are My Sunshine brings Trixie and Vi back to the south coast in 1944, where they use their hard won skills felling trees closer to home. Gosport is under heavy bombardment and the dangers feel more personal than ever. Trixie has begun seeing Eddie, a handsome local man who always seems to have money, but Vi's instincts tell her that something about him is not quite right. At the same time Trixie struggles with her lingering feelings for Cy, reported missing in action.

Throughout the series the physical graft of timber work is always front and centre, from aching muscles and blistered hands to the satisfaction of seeing a difficult job done. The stories pay close attention to bunkhouse gossip, shared meals and the small rituals that help the women endure harsh conditions.

These books are as much about friendship as they are about felling trees.