Why a Booktrail?
Saxon times/present day: Have you ever had memories of a life you’ve lived before? Are you sure?
Ferney
What you need to know before your trail
Mike and Gally Martin move to a new cottage in Somerset to start afresh but Gally is immediately drawn to the place. When they meet an old countryman, Ferney, Gally feels as if she’s known him for ever. Ferney certainly knows a lot about her.
Mike is unsettled by Ferney but Gally is intrigued to find out more. When she starts to find objects around the house, buried, that Ferney knows the story of, she starts to learn that both she and him have lived before. In different times, and through different tines. They hold the key to each other’s futures.
Travel Guide
The landscape of Penselwood is important for so many reasons in this novel. It has a mixed and tragic past and the fate of those who live there is tightly bound with the land itself. It might seem like a nice little village in Somerset but this village has secrets and past lives galore.
The town of Penselwood has links to Saxon times, witchcraft, the Monmouth drum, Glastonbury Tor and historic figures. The invasions and struggles of the past are not too different to those now – times change but people rarely do it is said.
The historical detail in the story maps out a story of English history and progress – the measuring of time for example and improved transportation. Ferney wants to protect the land around him – and his reasons for that are deep rooted in the past.
Can shared memory and reincarnation evoke the sights,sounds and smells of the past as well as the emotions. Is history really that far away and when something is buried in the soil, does it mean that it is forgotten forever? Ferney has a story, no several stories to tell and they are fascinating as they are complex.
Those who walked the land in and around Penselwood in in Saxon times have left their footprints, both literarily and figuratively on the land and the memories of those who live there still. Those who have lived before under various guises and those who will live again.
Streetview Maps
1) Somerset - Penselwood
The church at the heart of the village
The church at the heart of the village
2) Glastonbury Tor
Oh the secrets of the past which are here..
Oh the secrets of the past which are here..
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information:
Web: jameslongbooks.com
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