The Victory Garden

In the spring of 1918, Emily Bryce is a 20-year-old Englishwoman suffocating under the control of her parents at their country home near Torquay, Devon. Her father, Judge Harold Bryce, and her mother, Marjorie, refuse to let Emily volunteer or work despite the ongoing war. Emily writes to her best friend, Clarissa Hamilton, a volunteer nurse in France, lamenting her confinement. Emily's older brother, Freddie, was killed during his first week at the front in Ypres, and his death shattered the family: Mrs. Bryce, a social climber obsessed with propriety, experienced a mental health crisis and has become cold and critical, while Mr. Bryce has grown silent and prone to outbursts.

During a chaperoned visit to a nearby convalescent home for wounded officers, Emily meets Flight Lieutenant Robbie Kerr, a brash, handsome Australian aviator recovering from burns and a broken leg. Robbie flirts openly and soon pushes through the hedge into the Bryces' garden, wanting something positive to write to his mother on their remote sheep station in Australia. Emily and Robbie begin meeting secretly, drawn to his warmth and disregard for English social conventions.

Mrs. Bryce plans an elaborate 21st birthday party for Emily, who invites Robbie and two of his Australian friends. The Australians commit social gaffes that appall Mrs. Bryce. When Emily and Robbie slip away and share their first kiss, her mother witnesses it and forbids Emily from seeing him, calling him "utterly uncivilized." Robbie is transferred to the Royal Naval Hospital in Plymouth, a move Emily suspects her mother arranged.

Now 21 and legally free, Emily travels to Plymouth intending to volunteer, but the naval hospital has no need for untrained help. A recruitment office directs her to the Women's Land Army, a government program mobilizing women for agricultural labor. Her parents react with horror; her father calls the decision an act of selfishness and warns her not to expect rescue.

At a training farm near Tavistock, Emily meets Alice Adams, a sharp-tongued cockney war widow, and Daisy Watkins, a timid housemaid who never learned to read. The women, known as land girls, bond and train in milking, ploughing, and harvesting under Miss Foster-Blake's supervision. Emily visits Robbie on Sundays. When her parents appear at a rain-soaked potato field and try to remove her, having arranged her release and an office job, Emily refuses. Her father tells her she is no longer welcome at home.

When Robbie is certified fit to return to France, Emily spends a final weekend with him in Plymouth. They take a borrowed motor launch up the river but fall asleep on board and are stranded overnight during a thunderstorm. They make love for the first time, and Robbie proposes despite having earlier insisted the Australian outback is no place for her. Emily accepts. Days later, a gold ring with inset rubies arrives by post.

Miss Foster-Blake assigns Emily, Alice, and Daisy to the neglected estate of Lady Charlton in Bucksley Cross, a remote Dartmoor village where almost every family has lost someone to the war. The three settle into Cragsmoor Cottage, a damp stone dwelling locals call "the witch's place." Emily befriends Lady Charlton, an 83-year-old widow who lost her husband, son, and apparently her grandson Justin. Emily discovers a journal by Susan Olgilvy, a schoolmistress who lived in the cottage in 1858, whose life eerily mirrors her own.

When the land girls are recalled, Emily sees a newspaper headline reporting that Robbie crashed his plane into a field to save a village and was killed. Devastated, she insists on continuing to work rather than be discharged. Weeks later, a doctor confirms she is pregnant. She confides in Alice, who advises her to claim she and Robbie were secretly married. During a visit home, Emily's parents unknowingly confirm her fears by speaking with contempt about a neighbor's daughter in the same situation. Emily leaves without revealing her secret.

After the land girls are released for winter, Emily returns to Bucksley Cross. She asks Lady Charlton to let her live in the cottage in exchange for garden work and help with the estate's collections. When Emily confesses her pregnancy, the old woman is understanding and suggests Emily present herself as Mrs. Kerr, a war widow. Alice helps run the village pub, Daisy becomes a housemaid at the estate, and Emily learns to live independently for the first time.

Through Susan's journal, Emily discovers the cottage garden was planted as a herb garden by Tabitha Ann Wise in 1684, whose herbal recipes appear on the journal's reverse pages. Emily begins making remedies for villagers. Her medicines prove effective, and women throughout the village seek her help. The journal also reveals that Susan was arrested for poisoning a patient she had treated with herbal tonics. Emily is shaken but cannot stop helping those in need.

On November 11, 1918, church bells announce the armistice. Emily and the village women begin selling hand creams and lotions made from the herb garden. Emily encounters Justin Charlton, Lady Charlton's grandson, alive after surviving a German prisoner-of-war camp. She persuades him to visit his grandmother, but Lady Charlton reacts with cold suspicion, questioning whether he deserted. Justin storms out. Emily confronts the old woman, who later apologizes and begs Emily to stay.

Emily learns that Clarissa has died of influenza while nursing patients in London. The Spanish flu soon reaches Bucksley Cross during a snowstorm that isolates the village. Emily creates a herbal remedy, and she and Alice treat the sick house by house. Not a single villager dies. The grateful women declare Emily one of their own. Mr. Patterson, the village schoolmaster, proposes marriage, offering the baby a legitimate name. Emily declines, still grieving Robbie. She gives birth to a daughter, Roberta, called Bobbie.

Shortly after, Lady Charlton has a heart attack after drinking a herbal tonic Emily prepared. Mrs. Trelawney, the resentful housekeeper, accuses Emily of attempted murder and theft. The case echoes Susan's ordeal: Emily had picked foxgloves, a poisonous plant, that morning; the old woman had resisted drinking the tonic; and valuable objects from the house sit in the cottage. Emily insists the gifts were freely given and the foxgloves never used, but she faces a murder charge if Lady Charlton dies.

Judge Bryce arrives and dismantles the case with legal precision. Alice and Mr. Patterson present a petition signed by every villager attesting to Emily's character. Emily later encounters Justin at Exeter Cathedral, where he is reading his war poetry, and persuades him to visit his grandmother's bedside. Lady Charlton rallies and returns home. Justin dismisses Mrs. Trelawney and decides to restore the home farm.

Emily's father locates Susan Olgilvy's 1858 trial transcript, revealing Susan was acquitted. Emily suspects Lady Charlton, whose first name is Susan, may be Susan Olgilvy herself. At Bobbie's christening, where the baby receives the names Roberta Alice Susan, the whole village gathers. Emily's parents attend, her mother's haughtiness melting at the sight of her granddaughter. Justin returns with news that a chemist has connected Emily with a factory owner interested in manufacturing her lotion. Emily says she must first confer with her partners, the women of the village, and feels, for the first time, that her heart is beginning to heal.