The Care and Management of Lies by Jacqueline Winspear

Using her interest in WWI, Winspear tells a very different tale from her Maisie Dobbs series.  Friends and family know that long time friends Kezia and Tom are very much in love but few believe that the sophisticated and intelligent Kezia will be able to love her life as a farm wife as much as she loves Tom the farmer.  Surprisingly she approaches her new role with the same organizational joy as her student years - until Tom joins all the other young men from their village on the battle fields of France and she must not only manage the farm but adjust to the deprivation brought on by the war.  To try and help Tom cope with the horror of the trenches, she sends back long letters describing delicious meals she is making for him back home.  He, in turn, writes back assuring her that things are not as bad as she may have heard.  Neither is telling the truth.   Meanwhile Tom's sister and Kezia's best friend Thea is struggling to find her place in the women's suffrage and pacifist movements putting herself in danger and creating the need for deceit in her relationships.  In the end none of it can protect them from the consequences of the truth.