Searching for Shona by Margaret J. Anderson, a WWII evacuation story

Marjorie Malcolm-Scott leads a lonely but privileged existence in Edinburgh, living with her Uncle Fergus, who has been gone for months (war work?) and his disagreeable housekeeper, Mrs. Kilpatrick. Sometimes when she is sent outdoors to play, she goes to the local park and observes the rough and tumble orphans from St. Anne’s. 

One day, she starts talking to Shona, a red-headed orphan who skips school, and the two girls – quiet Marjorie and brash Shona – become friends. Then Marjorie’s uncle arranges for her to be evacuated to relatives in Canada, and the housekeeper packs her up and leaves her at the Waverley station where she will take a train to Glasgow and embark from there. Then she sees Shona:

“ Where are you going?”

“Our school is being sent to some place in the country. They haven’t told us where. I wish I was going to Canada, though. Do you go in a boat?”

Marjorie nodded unhappily. “I’d rather be you, just going to the country.”

“Pity we couldn’t change places, then,” said Shona, with a laugh.

And they do, exchanging clothes (Shona gets the matching green dress and coat, along with patent leather shoes, while Marjorie is practically in rags) and luggage, and promising to meet in the park after the war. Marjorie has second thoughts but it is too late. Soon she is in charge of a younger girl, Anna, and they are off to Canonbie, where they are billeted to two older ladies who run a ladies’ clothes shop. Marjorie is sure one of the children from the orphanage will expose her and she does try to tell one teacher that she isn’t Shona, but no one pays much attention except Anna, who grows used to her and seems to forget that Marjorie isn’t Shona. When winter comes, and the girls skate with their new classmates, they begin to fit in.

The prolonged cold weather caused a lot of hardship, especially when food and fuel supplies began to run low. Farmers worried about their sheep and cattle, and blizzards disrupted the movement of troop trains. But for Marjorie and Anna it was a happy time. They were no longer “them evacuees” but were now Canonbie children.

Marjorie does feel guilty, however, because the one thing Shona knew about her family was that her mother came from Canonbie and in her luggage is a small painting of a house that held a clue to the past. Marjorie is determined to find out more about the house and the painting since Shona isn’t there to investigate herself. That is one of the mysteries of the book: what happened to Shona’s parents and what is her connection to Canonbie? And the other question is how Marjorie will regain her true identity.

Marjorie had sometimes thought about confiding in Isobel, but by now she had told so many falsehoods that it was almost as if she couldn’t disentangle the truth from the lies. Besides, Marjorie had the comfortable feeling that she was now accepted as Shona MacInnes, the Miss Campbells’ evacuee from St. Anne’s, and she didn’t want to change that. She was happier now than she had ever been at Willowbrae Road. She hadn’t managed to capture the bold self-confidence that she was sure Shona possessed, but she had left behind some of the uncertainty and loneliness that had belonged to Marjorie. Even Anna no longer distinguished her from “the real Shona,” and spoke to her as if they had shared past adventures in the orphanage.

As you may recall, I am particularly fond of stories about children evacuated during WWII; this is an exceptionally good one, although it is short – only 159 pages. I also like impersonation stories and found the identity issue here fascinating. Marjorie is happier as an evacuated penniless orphan than as an affluent niece in Edinburgh and, as the war goes on, she basically becomes Shona, although never completely sheds a feeling of guilt that she is living a lie. The secondary characters are strong, especially Anna (who also thrives in Canonbie) and the Miss Campbells, who become very proud of Marjorie and her academic success. The author does a good job at describing Marjorie’s doubts and her adjustment to her new life, and I couldn’t help wishing Anderson had written a companion book about Shona’s experience in Canada!

This is my twentieth book for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. I must have picked it up long before I left New York in 2006, as it is a library discard that suddenly reappeared in my house from the Bloomingdale branch of the NYPL. Anderson was from Scotland herself, born in 1931 so would have grown up during the war. She studied genetics at the University of Edinburgh, but lived in Oregon after her marriage. I haven’t read any of her other books but she is also known for a time travel trilogy that begins with In the Keep of Time. She wrote for Ranger Rick, a magazine my brother subscribed to as a child, which I had forgotten even existed.

Title: Searching for Shona
Author: Margaret J. Anderson
Publication: Knopf, paperback, originally published in 1978
Setting: WWII Scotland
Genre: Juvenile fiction
Source: Library discard