Brook Cottage Books: Guest Post: Claire L. Brown talks about the inspiration behind The Poppy Garden

The Poppy Garden by Claire L. Brown

Release Date: 11th November 2016

Genres: Contemporary Fiction

I am delighted to welcome Claire L. Brown to the blog with a great guest post about her book THE POPPY GARDEN.

GUEST POST

I've always been obsessed by stories, ever since I can remember. If I wasn't reading them I was writing them or acting them out. I spent a great deal of my childhood with my Granddad. While my parents both worked on a Saturday my Granddad used to wake me at six and take me to the beach. I always thought it was just something he did to get out of the house while my nan did the house work or baked. It wasn't until after he died that I found out the beach was the first place he came when he returned home from World War 2.

My grandfather, Joseph Robinson was around nineteen when he joined the RAF in 1940. He rose to the rank of sergeant, the tail gunner of LM471 in 576 Squadron Bomber Command. He married my nan in February 1944 and on the night of the 24 March 1944 he was part of a bombing raid over Berlin when his plane was felled by shrapnel and crashed. My Grandfather was the last to parachute out alive; he landed in France and at some point was found by a farmer.

He was handed over to the Gestapo and entered as a POW. He took part in the digging of an escape tunnel as per the Great Escape but before he could leave he was marched out as part of the Long Walk a death march from which he escaped.

He returned home to his wife and raised a daughter and then two grandchildren. He was a strong man, I never heard him swear or loose his temper and he never told me the whole story of his time as a POW.

As a child you don't really question the stories you are told, now I wish I had because his is a story I would love to read completely.

I tried for a long time to find a way to tell his story, the lack of information was always my stumbling block, until one day while digging in my garden it struck me how I had spent many an hour watching him work in his. It was then that I realised this was his way of coping with the horrors he had lived. He took the bad and made it beautiful, he turned the horror of war in to the beauty of a rose.

His story isn't a recounting of history but more a story of hope, of coming to terms with the experiences of his life and finding a way to live and thrive. So I started writing The Poppy Garden, a story of an injured soldier coming to terms with his experience and the family that support and fight for him. I only hope this story honours his memory and brings beauty from darkness the way he brought beauty to his garden.

ABOUT THE BOOK

What would you do if the love of your life didn't know who you were?
What if he forgot you?

Forgot the first time you met, your first kiss, the day he proposed and the day you married?

What if six months after your perfect start it was all taken away in the blink of an eye?

Sky Flynn thought she had it all, she was the happiest she’d ever been from the moment she met Nick Robinson until the moment a military officer showed up at her door, then things changed.

Fighting to save her marriage and help her husband recover from both physical and mental scars of war Sky has to find away to cope and overcome.

Inspired by memories of her grandfather and how he channeled his PTSD into his garden she sets out to create somewhere for recovering service men to go, to assist in their recovery and create a place of beauty to share with their families. But will the beauty of the garden heal her husband’s wounds and bring him home to her forever?

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