When the Spanish flu reaches the English village of Keswick, the town’s pastor, John Carter, is stretched thin between prayers, burials, and the small mercies that keep neighbors alive. In the farmhouse barn, an unlikely leader emerges: Albert, a retired seabird who’s traded ocean winds for hay-sweet rafters.

With Mother Shrew and her nurses, quick-witted Virgil (a “flying” squirrel), and Iris with her red-tufted forest archers, the barn organizes to care for the fevered—and defend itself from Phlegm, a brutal rat warlord, and Bitterroot, his cold-eyed lieutenant.As medicine runs low and danger closes in, Albert holds the community to three simple rules—do no harm, carry one another, and stand—while Pastor John models an honest, hope-tethered faith. Battles are won with bravery and bandages, and losses are met with love.

Warm, luminous, and eminently readable aloud, The Farmhouse blends cozy adventure with moral clarity, offering middle-grade readers an animal epic about grief, courage, and the everyday kindness that makes a home.