Our horses in Egypt

the long version

Philomena is requisitioned from an English field at the start of the First World War, and sails for the Near East with a territorial regiment, the Dorset Yeomanry. But after the Armistice she doesn't come home. She is one of the 22,000 horses left behind by the War Office. Griselda Romney, a war widow, discovers that Philomena could still be alive. The forceful Mrs Romney decides that she has a duty to rescue her old hunter. She sets off to Egypt with her six-year-old daughter, Amabel, and, of course, Nanny. Our Horses in Egypt tells the interlocking stories of Philomena's war and Griselda's venture. Philomena serves faithfully, charging the dervishes in the Western Desert in 1916 and enduring the privations of Allenby's campaign in Palestine ... whilst in Cairo, in 1922, is not so very safe for Griselda, Amabel or Nanny. Meticulous, exciting and unflinching, Our Horses in Egypt depicts both the work of a troop-horse in a theatre of war and Griselda Romney's search for one toiling survivor. Our Horses in Egypt is a most extraordinary novel--and it is written in prose of striking beauty and truthfulness.--Book jacket flap.