My childhood in World War Two probably led to my interest in the effects of war on participants' children and succeeding generations. OXFORDSHIRE is the setting for much of this trilogy. Western Australia also features, but above all war-torn Bosnia during the civil of former Yugoslavia. In the first book (Another Kind of loving) waif-like Jasminka from besieged Sarajevo is fostered by Mike and Sara Hennessey in a village in north Oxfordshire. She grows into an English schoolgirl and teenager, falls in love with a young American, returns to Sarajevo with him at the time of 9/11. She also becomes the daughter Mike has always wanted and cannot have. In the second book, Beyond the Broken Gate the effects are also from both World Wars, especially on Luke, a troubled young man whose adored grandfather was badly damaged by the battle of the Somme; and young Australian Rowena whose father watched his best friend die in World War Two. In the third book, Long Shadows, Mike has to face dark echoes from his youth in the Sixties as well as his true feelings for his foster daughter, now an attractive young woman and single mum. And Jasminka must face hers for Mike when she is drawn back to Sarajevo to build reconciliation in the wounded city of her birth.
There may be a fourth book to come.