Both formats can be pre-ordered from your favourite bookshop or online supplier so do get ordering! Here's why: I'm unable to do much face-to-face promotion at the moment due to the pandemic, so your pre-order will help to propel the book up the ranks of online searches - and give it a vital boost.
In The Fire Portrait, the action moves to a
fictional hamlet, Aloe Glen, set on the railway line heading north from
Cape Town. It’s a place of marked contrasts… in climate,
culture and customs. When Englishwoman Frances
McDonald sets up home there in the 1930s, she's regarded with suspicion by the
community and seeks an outlet by
painting the stunning landscape. Soon the spectre of war
threatens to divide not only the country but the hamlet itself – and scupper
Frances’s hard-won acceptance. When she reunites unexpectedly with a
former love and
her husband leaves to fight for the Allies, she gains a child but loses
her home in a moment that will change her life. Out of the smoke and ash, she's propelled on a journey that will take her from the arid veld to the bright
lights of London and beyond.
The Fire
Portrait hangs in a gallery in London.
'Haunting
portrait hints at turmoil', headlines one newspaper.
'An omen', says
another.
A modern classic is the consensus.
This book has been a few years in the making, much of it during the pandemic. For me, writing was a chance to escape the grim headlines... and out of this sad period has come a fresh story. For all of us, I suspect, this has been a time of reassessment. And in the absence of close contact with those we love, the lockdowns have reminded us of the reassuring company a book can bring.
I hope that The Fire Portrait will offer that to you.
More next time...
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