Flambards in Summer - K. M. Peyton

Widowed during the First World War at the age of 21, Christina returns to Flambards in the hope of picking up the threads of the life she knew before her marriage. But the Flambards Christina returns to is not the same - the paddocks are a jungle, the house buried in ivy, and the once busy stables empty and desolate. Christina sets herself to the task of returning Flambards to its former glory. This third novel in the best-selling Flambards series was reissued in the Oxford Children's Modern Classics series earlier this year, and is now being issued in a mass-market paperback format.