Transita Books - Sorrow of Sisters

The Sorrow of Sisters by Wendy K. Harris

ISBN: 1 9051752 64 1

Published: March 2006

As he shuffled past me he paused. ‘You wouldn’t have liked her – your mother’s sister – strange, mad thing she was.’ He looked at me at last, rheumy-eyed, and words tumbled out before he could stop them. ‘Don’t go over to the island, Jane. Nothing of interest there. Wraith Cottage is just a hovel. Not worth wasting your time.’

Synopsis

Forty-nine year old Jane sits in her glass-walled designer home tapping out lucrative novels. She has accepted her childlessness, adores her comfortable husband, Chas and copes with her irascible father, Henry. But she is feeling dulled by the weight of her own repetitive fiction.

Then Aunt Lillian dies and leaves her Wraith Cottage on the Isle of Wight. Jane has never heard of Lillian and Henry refuses to enlighten her. But Jane’s curiosity has been aroused and she decides to investigate.

Her inheritance reveals a story more extraordinary than she could ever have imagined. She encounters some astonishing people and rediscovers her own inspiration.

Wendy Harris was born in Surrey in an air raid shelter during a doodle-bug attack. The youngest of four sisters, attending a girls’ grammar school, she needed to write in order to get a word in edgeways.

The writing of short stories and poetry was interwoven with working as a nurse, homoeopath, counsellor, interfaith minister and sharing the upbringing of five children.

A rattling old Herefordshire rectory and aching back precipitated a change of life and she moved with her husband and a laptop into a caravan and trundled around Wales and England finally becoming ensnared by The Undercliff of the Isle of Wight, entranced by its history of smuggling, shipwrecking and landslips. Here she was inspired by tumbling cliffs and precarious cottages to write The Sorrow Of Sisters which has also been translated into German and Dutch.

‘My advice is to gather together every shred of self-worth that you can summon, plus all your memories that make you feel good. Hold onto them like mad and fashion a new life for yourself doing what you want.’

She tapped Sophie’s arm again. ‘Ditch the rest; it’s not worth the headspace. And don’t try to see too far into the future either. Do what’s right for you now.’

Sophie, bereft after the loss of her mother and her husband’s betrayal, walks out of her demanding profession and her home seeking refuge with her friend, Jill, on the Isle of Wight. She doesn’t suspect that she is about to be drawn into another crisis.
Jill, a psychologist, is as obsessive and compulsive as the clients she treats and has her own complex reasons for persuading Sophie to stay.

Over the cliffs at Blue Slipper Bay, Nick lives in a beach hut, challenged by the sea. A seeker of truth, walled in by his own guilt and grief, he finds solace in resurrecting the forgotten gardens of Wraith Cove Hotel.

Sophie, Jill and Nick all need to make peace with their past before they can risk taking a second chance with the future.

A deeply moving story about the risk, doubt and numbing fear in taking a second chance in life.