Patricia Ferguson
Patricia's novel 'The Midwife's Daughter' (Penguin 2012) was featured on Radio 4's Book at Bedtime.
Set in a Cornish village just after the First World War it tells the story of two sisters, Violet and Bea Diamond, and of Violet’s momentous decision to adopt a young black orphan, Gracie. This adoption has far-reaching and unforeseen consequences for the family, in a tale of prejudice, struggle, privation, love, tragedy and the indomitability of the human spirit. The eponymous statue is a commemoration of the war dead, but this is a novel about much more than the aftermath of conflict. It explores a generation’s progress through a time of remarkable social change, effortlessly blending the personal dramas of its protagonists with the global landscape from which they cannot be separated. Moving, endearing, compelling and beautifully written, it grips the reader all the way to its quietly heart-breaking conclusion.
'Peripheral Vision' is her previous novel and the one before that, 'It So Happens', was long-listed for the Orange prize.
Between 1985 and 1995 Pat had three novels and a short story collection published by Deutsch. Her first book, 'Family Myths and Legends', won the Betty Trask, David Higham and Somerset Maugham awards. In 1995 she took an extended break from writing to raise her children, but returned with 'It So Happens'.
Her latest novel 'Aren't We Sisters?' was published by Penguin on 3rd July 2014.
Following on from 'The Midwife's Daughter', 'Aren't We Sisters?' is a gripping novel about buried secrets and unlikely friendship.
Norah Thornby can no longer afford to live in her grand family home in the centre of Silkhampton. Unless, perhaps, she can find a respectable lodger.
But Nurse Lettie Quick is not nearly as respectable as she seems. What's really going on at the clinic she has opened? And why has she chosen Silkhampton?
Meanwhile the beautiful Rae Grainger has found the perfect place to stay, in an isolated house miles away from the town. It's certainly rather creepy, especially at candlelit bedtime, but Rae knows that all she has to do is stay out of sight, until others - paid, professional others - are ready to take her little problem away. Then she can just forget the whole ghastly business . . . can't she?
No one guesses, of course, that there's a killer quietly at work in Silkhampton; that in one way or another all three women are in danger.
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