The Home Front

The Secret Garden in World War II, based on countless true stories

     During the Blitzkrieg in World War II, Nazi planes dropped munitions on London in a nightly horror of bombings.  Families slept fully clothed, to facilitate the scramble to their cellars whenever the air raid sirens sounded.  Having lived for years in the encroaching shadow of war, ordinary citizens endured not just bombs, but other terrors as well, including rationing of necessities and constant fear for the safety of their loved ones at the front.

     In 1939 and 1940, fearing a Nazi land invasion, the British government evacuated nearly a million children from London to safer distances in places like the Yorkshire countryside.  To London-bred children, the culture shock of North England and separation from their families must have been a torment every bit as threatening as the nightly bombing raids.

     The Home Front tells the story of a family torn apart by war. Twelve-year-old Leighanna evacuates to North England.  Housed by two reluctant widows who lost their own families in the last war, Leighanna finds herself friendless, but for an outcast stable boy.  With her father and brother in combat at the French front and her mother struggling alone in London, Leighanna must reconcile her desperate wish to be protected by her family with her equally crucial need to grow into the young woman she must become in order to survive war, isolation, and loss.

     A tender coming-of-age story, at once heartrending and hopeful, The Home Front is a family film with powerful roles for two older women, a parted mother and father, and preteen girl.

Analogs: Empire of the Sun, The Secret Garden, Anne of Green Gables, Hope & Glory, Au Revoir Les Enfants

Honors:
Nicholl Fellowship (semifinalist)
Page Awards (finalist)
Scriptapalooza (semifinalist)
Final Draft Big Break (quarterfinalist)
Emerging Screenwriters (top 100)
Table Read My Screenplay  (honorable mention)
Marin Arts Council Grant for Screenwriting