During both world wars, Elizabeth von Arnim sought sanctuary in Albemarle County, Virginia. The country house, Clover Fields, left its mark on her war novel Christine. She struggled with her own grief as she wrote of Christine’s trials. The war experience underlying the novel comes into clearer focus when compared with the writing of two contemporaries who were equally affected by the First World War, Katherine Mansfield and Vera Brittain. On her second visit to Virginia at age 73, she was again an exile, this time from home in France. As in 1917, she was angry at the American reluctance to enter the war. Preoccupied with her dog Billy, she found a perfect landlady and developed a fascination with Virginia author Amélie Rives. The resemblance of a Charlottesville man to her long-dead husband Henning evoked nostalgia for her days in Prussia and allowed her to reconcile with Henning’s ghost in a way reminiscent of Fanny Skeffington’s late equanimity.