‘What inspired you to write this novel?’ readers often ask. Inspiration is a complex subject, so it’s not an easy question to answer. But I think that there were three motivating factors.
Firstly, as in Robert Frost’s poem ‘The Road Not Taken’, we sometimes look back at choices we made earlier in life, and wonder where the alternative route would have led us. This was the underlying idea that inspired my story of Rosie’s quest for lost love.
At much the same time, new websites like Facebook and Friends Reunited were making it easy to connect with old friends and lovers. Several people I knew were doing just that, often leading to renewed relationships, some successful, some not. Marriage breakdowns were often the cause, or the effect, of those relationships. That struck me as an interesting area to explore.
The third factor came when I had the chance to revisit the island of Hydra. It was over forty years since I’d first been there, and the strange mix of familiarity and subtle changes in the island itself evoked powerful emotions. The island was and wasn’t the same. But so, and neither, was I.
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Ellie has always believed that knowing about the past helps you to understand the present. But it’s not until she researches her father’s unhappy childhood that she discovers the far-reaching impact that one person’s actions can have on others – including herself.
Set in Australia and England, this novel follows Ellie’s quest for the truth about a dark secret in her father’s family, spanning the 1930s to the 21st century.
Breezes From Dark Boundaries
(work in progress)
When Claire’s childhood friend, Amy, whips her off from the safety of her Spanish host family to the free and easy atmosphere of seventies’ Ibiza, she knows it means adventure, fun, and probably trouble. But not even she can imagine the disastrous consequences that await them when Amy falls for the sinister Miguel.
Helpless to deter her friend, Claire can only watch as Amy pushes the boundaries ever further, from dabbling in drugs, to breaking the law, towards a crisis that will affect her for the rest of her life.
Ruth Larrea Author 