Village Affairs

Open the gate to Fairacre, America's favorite English village. The English village of Fairacre may appear idyllically peaceful to passersby, but those who live among its shady lanes always have problems to untangle. When a terrible rumor emerges - that the Fairacre School is to be closed and the children bused to nearby Beech Green - the village is up in arms at once. The schoolmistress, Miss Read, suffers agonizing indecision at the prospect, and her situation is made worse when her infants'room teacher decides to leave and the short-tempered Mrs. Pringle becomes more contrary than ever.

Miss Read is the pseudonym of Mrs. Dora Saint, a former schoolteacher beloved for her novels of English rural life, especially those set in the fictional villages of Thrush Green and Fairacre. The first of these, Village School, was published in 1955, and Miss Read continued to write until her retirement in 1996. In the 1998, she was awarded an MBE, or Member of the Order of the British Empire, for her services to literature. She lives in Berkshire.