Welcome to readers who have come from the link provided from the British Estonian Association (BEST), for whom I am giving a talk on November 21st in the Estonian embassy in London.
I am really looking forward to the event. I will be giving a talk on the Estonian-based novel ‘Forest Brothers’ and the writing process. The whys and the wherefores of the story, how it came to be and what am I trying to create.
You get the opportunity to ask me questions on things I may not have covered and I will be signing copies of the novel, which I will be selling for £6 on the night.
To give you a flavour, the blurb of the novel is:
December 1918: The royal navy sends a squadron of ships to the fledgling Estonian nation to aid their fight for independence. When the squadron is due to depart, a young navy officer jumps ship, sacrificing his career for the love of a woman – but the navy reclaims its own. Huw Williams is dragged back to his homeland in disgrace.
Years later, the world is at war again. Huw is scratching a living on the docks when the past comes to call. He is flung into covert operations in a land caught between two armies, and a people living under threat of instant death or deportation to oblivion in Siberia. Huw soon finds out that killers are on his track.
He joins the Forest Brothers, the partisans living secretly amongst the silver birches of Estonia. There, ghosts of his past life emerge. This is not the return to romantic dreams he had imagined. Nevertheless, an old flame rekindles, and the once embittered Huw rediscovers his desire to help save the country and the people he loves – but how can he do either, forced to live as a fugitive in the forest?
The strapline is
A World War II drama set in a land the UK forgot
The message of which is the reflection on how the UK abandoned the Baltic States at the end of the war and our present day ignorance to this history. A dig at the Brits, perhaps. The Mail would be proud of me…
I really hope you can attend and look forward to seeing you .
