Gael Harrison – författare

In the winter of 1974, Edie is on the rebound after breaking up with her hippy boyfriend and is suddenly swept off her feet by Kamal Shariff, a Malaysian lawyer she meets in Edinburgh.Thrilled at the prospect of a more exciting way of life, Edie travels with Kamal to his homeland and finds herself immersed in a country more exotic than she could have imagined. She faces the challenges arising from a marriage between two races, cultures and religions, whilst also learning to integrate into both the indigenous and expatriate communities each with wildly different values.Unprecedented events link Edie back to her father’s family in Scotland. How does she reconcile her life in Kota Kinabalu with that of her father and grandmother who lived on Scotland’s north-east coast? How can the aftermath of a murder in a Glasgow tenement have such a profound impression on Edie? By understanding the mysteries of the past, Edie manages to come to terms with her own devastating grief. Malaysia and the island of Borneo provide the background to a story of an impressionable young woman’s journey from Scotland to South-East Asia and where, with her quiet sense of purpose, she is able to find the happiness she craves.

Where the Golden Oriole Sang is a novel set primarily on the rubber estates of Malaya in the 1950s, during the time of the Emergency, when the Chinese communists were fighting a brutal guerrilla war against the British and Malayan administration with the aim of bringing communism to Malaya.It is the story of Anna, now a prosperous woman living in Edinburgh, who, in trying to make sense of the traumas of her childhood, travels to the highlands of Scotland in the hope that the contents of an old tin box may throw light on her mother’s untimely death when Anna was just two years old. Anna’s quest for the truth reveals unfolding layers of dark secrets, passion and murders that shrouded her developing years, and answers to questions that have burdened her since she was a child.It is a book that tugs at the emotions while the reader is transported from rural villages of the Highlands of Scotland to the steamy jungles and rubber estates of a seldom seen Malaya. The story weaves around the characters of the beautiful, vibrant Eilidh, her intrepid husband Alex and the fiery Estelle, but it is through Anna the child that the reader discovers the repercussions of three fatal tragedies that dominate the narrative. Anna, as a grown woman, finally faces her nemesis in the Malay woman, Aminah, and at last is able to return to Malaysia after a prolonged exile.When Anna again meets the characters that knew her as a child, the reader will share the pathos as she reflects on her odyssey and at last is able to come to terms with the tragedies of the past.