Looking Forward

Published by Headline. Jacket illustration: Dorathea Sharp

The three children stood together, waiting. ...the tiny branch-line station drowsed peacefully in the June sunshine; the big bright faces of the holly­hocks nodding against the tarred fence; roses and honeysuckle growing together in a scented tangle by the booking office; milk churns waiting for collection.

(Photograph: Bridget Rochard)

 

Life at The Keep changes forever when Fliss, Mole and Susannah arrive in the summer of 1957. Their parents and older brother have been killed in Kenya so the children are sent to their grandmother, Freddy, who lives in Devon.

 

Freddy is no stranger to grief but she would be lost without the support and encouragement of her devoted helpers, Ellen and Fox, who enable her to cope with the latest tragedy. Above all she looks to her brother-in-law, Theo, to guide her while, under Freddy’s watchful gaze, the three children heal their wounds and embark on the treacherous journey to adulthood.

 

Looking Forward is the first book about  the Chadwick family - often referred to as the Chadwick Trilogy.

‘It all started because I wanted to find out what happens when an entire generation is wiped out,’ says Marcia. ‘Actually it’s never that simple. In this case there was the violence in Kenya and that left its mark on the children which meant that even when they were fully grown the story hadn’t ended. Before I really knew what was happening, I had a trilogy to write.’

 

READ AN EXTRACT

  

 

“the golden trumpets of the daffodils”