TWO local authors talking about two very different journeys, both of which have had a major impact on their lives – that’s the intriguing programme for the launch of their books at Frome’s Hunting Raven Bookshop on Thursday 30th October.
‘It Leaves Me the Same’ by Ed Green, tells of his great-uncle’s journey from a Somerset farmhouse to the front line in the First World War and of his own pilgrimage tracing his footsteps. Dizzy Greenfield’s ‘Strays and Relations’ describes her search for her birth mother, the disappointment when she discovers a grave bearing her name and her elation when, some years later, she is contacted out of the blue by her birth father who tells her that her mother is, in fact, still alive.
Both books have been published with the help of Frome Writer’s Collective’s Silver Crow book brand, set up to help FWC members along the often challenging road to publication.
The evening, which is free, starts at 7.00pm.
Ed Green ‘It Leaves Me the Same’ following the discovery of a bag containing his great-uncle Allen’s First World War diaries and over 30 letters. Ed’s family still live in the same farmhouse from which Allen left for the war when he was recruited at just 19.
“Before that,” Ed says, “the furthest he’d travelled was to Weymouth on his old bicycle.
“For years, great-uncle Allen was just a photograph on the wall, but the discovery of the bag brought his story to life and gave me a real sense of him – a thoughtful, hard-working country lad with a dry wit.”
Ed’s book is full of detail and warmth, helping readers picture just what being a young soldier in France, far away from home, must have been like, as well as giving a wonderful account of farming life in Somerset a hundred years ago.
Captivated by his relative’s story, Ed, who has a farming background like Allen, decided to visit the places his great-uncle would have seen and “It Leaves Me the Same” also tells of Ed’s journey as he follows in his great-uncle’s footsteps. His travels took him to Allen’s training camp at Wyke Regis in Dorset, then to Folkestone, Boulogne, Rouen and Amiens, before crossing the Somme to Caudry and the Forest of Mormal, which Allen reached with his comrades in the Dorsetshire Regiment in November 1918.
In ‘Strays and Relations’ Dizzy Greenfield tells how she began life as a surviving twin and was fostered until a permanent home was found. Growing up, she was well supported by her adoptive family, but continued to think about her original identity and why was she given up for adoption.
The book describes how Dizzy discovered a tenuous lead to her birth family, which resulted in her going to Ireland to search for them. There she found a grave and believed her mother, Marie, to be dead.
The story moves to some years later. Though happily married, Dizzy continued to feel that something was missing from her life, that she was a bit of a stray. Understandably, she felt drawn to other strays, of an animal variety, which she brought into her household.
When her birth father, Tommy, made contact out of the blue via a private detective, she was taken by surprise. She had another shock when Tommy told her that her mother was alive too.
A new journey then lay ahead. Dizzy travelled northwards to meet the many members of her lively new family – a family very different from the one she was used to. Bit by bit, she began to work out how to fit the disparate bits of her life together.
