Once the Deed Is Done

Shortlisted for the 2026 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

To be truly alive means having to make choices. To be truly alive is also, quite simply, to love.

Northern Germany, 1945. Dead of night and dead of winter, a boy sees strangers - forced labourers - fleeing across the heathland: shawls and skirts in the snowfall. The end days are close, war brings risk and chance, and Benno is witness to something he barely understands.

Later, when peace finally arrives in his small town, the adults close ranks, closing their mouths and minds to the winter's events. They all have their reasons. They all hope [the worst is over, and] that in any case the labour camp on the outskirts will surely be closed now. Benno swallows his secret [about the women workers], keeping it even from Freya, his schoolyard companion.

But with peace come soldiers - English this time - and Red Cross staff officers. Ruth is on her first posting from London, arriving in the town only to uncover the camp and its remaining workers, abandoned there at war's end. She is given charge of them, and also the many new arrivals: more forced labourers from across the heathland and beyond, all with their own losses and stories, and all housed in a new camp on the site of the old. Among these refugees are children - Sasha and Yeva - waiting and waiting for word of their mother. Where could she be now?

For Benno, too, questions are circling. Freya has heard whispers - about the camp and that snow night and the strangers - enough to be wondering about Benno and his silence. When is an act of kindness an act of betrayal?