It's 1955. Ellen is driving from Newcastle to Belfast to search for Liza, the mother she has never known, when she has an accident. Her life hangs in the balance as flashbacks of her loveless childhood and memories of her teenage years during WW2 unfold. Evacuated to a Northumbrian village, twelve-year-old Ellen is alone and vulnerable, but soon befriends Ash, a village girl who has been abused by her father. Then Daniel, a young Jewish boy who escaped Berlin after his parents were arrested and killed by the Nazis, comes to stay.When they find a young German pilot, whose plane has crashed in nearby woods, he becomes entangled in their emotional lives, for each of them representing an object through which to fulfil their own needs. All four are young, without parents or home or guidance during the war, and are swept up in a storm of love, power, revenge, betrayal and loss.angel wing is the prequel to The Broken Line. Together they tell the story of three generations of women in one family, as themes of love, loss, guilt and betrayal unfold.This is a beautifully written evacuee story with a difference, you won't be disappointed.Award-winning book that recently earned acclaim from the prestigious Next Generation Indie Book Awards
Seventeen-year-old Anita is left rootless and tormented by feelings of guilt after a series of traumatic losses. When a letter is discovered amongst her father's papers, she vows to discover the truth about the Irish grandmother she had thought long dead, but her initial search leads nowhere.Eleven years later, against the background of a precarious life as an artist in 1980s' London, and the Troubles of Northern Ireland, an unexpected gift finally sets Anita on her quest to unravel family secrets and betrayals. As she uncovers the story of Liza, her maternal grandmother, she comes to understand how unhealed wounds have been passed down through generations of women in her family. A baby stolen at birth, lives torn apart by loss - she must heal the broken line of her maternal lineage.The author has a gift for making her story telling compelling and empathetic on subjects that can often be painful.
