In 1940, Millie and Reginald Thompson make the heartbreaking decision to send their eleven-year-old daughter Beatrix to America to escape the dangers in London. For the next five years, Bea finds herself enveloped into the Gregory family, sandwiched between sons William and Gerald. Although Bea has made a life for herself in America, she is forced to leave her new family behind to return to England after the war, finding herself caught between two worlds.

Told in short vignettes from different point-of-views, Beyond That, the Sea is a bittersweet character-driven story about being caught between two worlds. And by short vignettes, I mean very short vignettes; most chapters are only a page or two. I absolutely adored this enveloping story. The story spends much of its time on the war years, developing the relationships between all the characters. Then the narrative jumps forward twice more to reflect on the evolution of their relationships in a slow, thoughtful way.