This is previously published as The Imperfect Tense. 'When I was young the war started. When I was young my father was a soldier. When I was young I moved to the country. When I was young I went to France and fell in love'. 1950. Eleanor is sixteen when she goes to the Loire Valley on a French Exchange. But the beauty of her surroundings are at odds with the family who live there. It is a family torn apart by the memories of the German occupation, and buckling under the burden of the dark secrets they keep. Etienne, the dark and brooding owner is friendly, but his wife Mathilde's malicious behaviour overshadows Eleanor's days. As the secrets reveal themselves one by one, Eleanor begins to understand the terrible legacy of war, and when death comes to the vineyard, she learns the redemptive power of love.
Mary Fitzgerald was born and brought up in Chester. At eighteen she left home to start nursing training. She ended up as an operating theatre sister in a large London hospital and there met her husband. Ten years and four children later the family settled for a while in Canada and later the USA. For several years they lived in West Wales, northern Scotland and finally southern Ireland until they settled again near Chester. Mary had long given up nursing and gone into business, first a children's clothes shop, then a book shop and finally an internet clothes enterprise. Mary now lives in a small village in north Shropshire close to the Montgomery canal and with a view of both the Welsh and the Shropshire hills.
