Away To The West describes two journeys in post-war England and two young people trying to find a way to escape. Here the observer is a young girl, Rowan, whose eyes are on the people she meets: those with settled country homes, newcomers, men and women back from the war, "displaced persons" of all kinds.

In the first part, All Round The Moon, Ralph, whose chief interest is in the wild life around him, begins to make his own way but realizes that old ties are not so easily broken. The second part, A Wind Of Autumn, takes up the story six years later, when Rowan is 15. She has always been a misfit in her clever ambitious family, but alone for a long weekend in the country she begins to find herself.