Readers’ Favorite Review ~ Ancasta Guide me Swiftly Home

“Diana weaves a story that is real and true and makes you feel that you are right there living it!” Reviewed by Michelle Randall for Readers’ Favorite Ancasta is the continuation of the family saga that began in Riduna. Harriet is now a widow with four grown children. Edward is still traveling the seas, enjoying his freedom. As the world starts to change and a war looms, we follow the former childhood friends and sweethearts as they deal with the ravages and realities of war in England. No one is untouched by the war, as Harriet will watch her twin sons both volunteer for service along with her daughter’s husband. It will also be a time to reunite with old friends; Jane, with whom she had lost touch will become the steady rock of a friend that Harriet leaned on before she had Joe. Now with Joe gone, Jane will again become that rock. Diana Jackson doesn’t pull any punches with the tragedies and realities of war and what it was like. Still, that does not diminish the glow of the story of a family once again facing the idea that dreams change and life goes on. In first Riduna and then Ancasta, we follow Harriet and Edward, who always thought their path in life would be together, but the reality of life was that it was not meant to be. Finally, in their retirement years, are they able to realize that it wasn’t them who changed but the world around them and that things happened to them to make the dreams change. Diana Jackson weaves a story that is real and true and makes you feel that you are right there living it. It is a wonderful mix of the romance and realities of life with some of the technological advances of the historical time period of the novel. It is definitely a novel of moving on and never giving up, one any reader will enjoy.

**** review! You can read this review and others on The Readers’ Favorite website at https://readersfavorite.com/book-review/26379

Festive Christmas Deal ~99Cents 14th-20th December!

Ancasta Guide me Swiftly Home, historical fiction set between 1910 and 1920 in

Ancasta Guide me Swiftly Home

Southampton, the Solent area and The Channel Islands is 99Cents  for one week only on KINDLE.

~A HEARTFELT READ ~ L Simms Top 100 Reviewer!

          ~VERY ENJOYABLE BOOK~

                      ~ STRONG HISTORICAL NARRATIVE ~

~CHARACTERS DESCRIBED SO VIVIDLY~

Original Aspects of WW1

I was thrilled to receive my latest 5* review on Amazon.com:

“I don’t normally read historical fiction, but I’m glad I took the leap with Ancasta. The passion and knowledge the writer possesses flows through the pages, and Ancasta probably has the best background research and world view of any book that I’ve read. A thoroughly enjoyable read, which took me to a place and time completely unknown to me, until now!”

MH84 ~ Please say hello by email sometime. I’d love to say thank you. You have made my day with your encouragement!

OR… A LAST MINUTE CHRISTMAS GIFT

Ancasta Guide me Swiftly Home would also make a great last minute Christmas gift in paperback too for anyone interested in

Historical Fiction

                                    The Great War and the role of Women

                                                                                                             Early Flying Boat

History of Southampton and Woolston

                                                                      a lover of Guernsey or Alderney………

Available in Waterstones West Quay, Southampton or on Amazon

Although the second in The Riduna Series Ancasta is written to stand alone!

and if you read it I would be truly grateful if you could give an honest review on Amazon, Goodreads or both. Please spread the word……………..RT or SHARE…….

Have a wonderful Christmas everyone!

Two contrasting heroines ~ Harriet and Sarah

Last week I received a lovely review from a reader of Ancasta via Facebook:

“Yes I really loved it, I read the start and then took a break and read the bulk of the book quickly, but I need to reread the start I think. I thought it was great, so many characters so complex, must have been hard to choose which characters to not really delve into, like Anthony and Ernest’s wife.

Left me feeling I wanted more, it would make a great TV drama. It was a great read. Have you started work on the third book.”

….and it set me thinking about my characters. I was told by an earlier reader that I could write at a tangent with many of my characters because they are so strong….what about Jane for those of you who’ve read Riduna and Ancasta?…..her struggle to choose love or her vocation, nursing; her training; her service abroad and finally sharing her experience training other auxiliary nurses at The Royal Victoria Hospital, Netley…then a rekindling of love maybe….forever choices on her life…..yes she’d make a novel in herself.

But what of my two main heroines Harriet, the matriarch of the story and Sarah her headstrong daughter. Both were women of their times.

Harriet was a child of the Victorian Age, an age when her elders were respected and their rule was law on the island of Riduna. (Alderney) A bright young girl, (in Riduna) she showed potential at school and was given a wider education than many of her peers as she became a ‘teacher helper,’ but although a sensible lass, loyal to her family and Edward her childhood sweetheart, she chose marriage over vocation, although given two opportunities to do otherwise. She was meant to be a mother, unlike her best friend Jane above. By the time we see her in ‘Ancasta Guide me Swiftly Home,’ the second in the series, her family are grown up and flying the nest and although she never married Edward, he is still in the background of her life.

Sarah, her only daughter is a child of the early 20th century, influenced by the desire for more in life for women than bringing up a family and caring for the home. Marrying an officer in the army, she felt trapped by life in the barracks and, however complete she felt for a time at the birth of her son, she still deep down dreamed of more. It was not that she was fully aware of the suffragette movement until she moved back with her mother during The Great War, but that she had a strong-willed character from the start and was quite a handful for her husband Anthony. Sarah relished new opportunities, firstly working at Supermarine and then sharing her mother’s business.

You see, it was by now respectable for Harriet, a widow by this time, to own her own business. Both she and Sarah became ladies of independent means as they ran a boarding house together, utilizing their skills to the full. Harriet’s nurturing, caring nature and yet her education made her perfectly capable of dealing with financial matters. Sarah on the other hand was businesslike and professional and yet willing to turn her hand to the sewing her mother so detested.

My next post will be true stories of other women of their time which I discovered whilst researching, with some surprising findings.