Remember to keep reading for your free short story at the end. TO PARTICIPATE OR NOT? People join clubs to participate in whatever that club’s activities are, and because of a shared interest or enjoyment. That holds true for book clubs as well. A Book club tends to introduce its members to books they otherwise might not read, and exposes them to authors they might not have encountered in the past. What happens when a member finds the book selected for the month so unpalatable they can’t persist with it? Or, when they know they do not enjoy a particular author’s work? The obvious answer is not to read that book. But, what happens then when the same situation is encountered over consecutive months? Should the member continue to attend and admit every month that they have not read the book? Some of us persist in the hope the next selection will be great, but it is difficult to persist when there is a pile of ‘to be read’ books waiting at home … books the member has selected for themselves according to their personal preferences. WHAT’S NEW?
Kayla Danoli’s new book A Life of Tea and Sugar has been released and, surprisingly, before the end of June. The historical fiction novel is available in both paperback and digital formats. See more below. Neive Denis’s new Sonny Whittington Private Investigator novel has started its edit phase. She is relatively confident of a September release for the novel. In the meantime, Book 3 of the Merivale Retirement Village series is being written. NEW RELEASE Kayla Danoli’s latest release. This is Sarah Erskine’s life story from birth to middle age. Along the way it provides glimpses into the lives of early tea planters, entrepreneurial giants of Glasgow, plantation owners during the dying days of the Caribbean sugar industry, and pioneers of the Australian sugar industry. But much of Sarah’s story is set in the bustling port city of Glasgow. It is a story of heartache and sadness, and also of new beginnings and another chance of happiness. It is the story of one young woman’s life spent across five countries during the period from the 1820s through to the 1860s. SOME LIGHT READING This month’s light reading is an excerpt from Kayla Danoli’s new book A Life Of Tea And Sugar India 1839 “You wanted to see me, Father?” “Ah, My Girl, yes,” Thomas Erskine said. “Come in, come in. I won’t detain you for long. I just wanted to tell you that soon you are to set sail for Scotland to live with your Grandmother McGowan. Your basic education has been completed, and you are almost sixteen. Now it is time for you to move to the next stage of your life. Your grandmother has been entrusted with this task; the sooner it begins, the better. Your passage is booked on a ship sailing for Scotland. It leaves here in six weeks. Miss Crowther’s time as governess to children on our neighbouring plantation is ending, and she also is returning to Scotland. She will be your chaperone on the voyage until you are handed over to your grandmother in Glasgow. Over the next weeks, you must devote time to selecting the belongings you wish to take. That is all I have to say at this time, other than to counsel you to apply yourself diligently to your preparations for the voyage and your new life in Scotland. You may go now.” “No. Why? Why do I have to go away? Why do I have to leave while you and Mother remain here?” “Such impertinence on your part only serves to confirm how urgent it is for you to commence the next stage of your development. Your grandmother will see to it that you are fit to take your place in society. Now, go and start your preparations.” Sarah almost bowled over her mother, Flora McGowan Erskine, as she rushed from her father’s study in tears. “Sarah, Sarah, wait, please. What has happened?” Flora called after her fleeing daughter. Her daughter was heading for her room, so Flora allowed her a couple of minutes before following. “Best to let her settle a little before I try talking to her,” Flora murmured. A young serving girl hovered outside Sarah’s door. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what is wrong. She wouldn’t talk to me. She just rushed into her room and slammed the door on me.” “Thank you, Maisie. Go back to your duties. I’ll look after things here.” Flora found Sarah sprawled on her bed and sobbing her heart out. “Come now, Sarah; this is no way to behave. You have managed to upset poor Maisie, as well as me. So, what is all this drama about?” “Father said I am to leave next week to live in Scotland with Grandma McGowan. He became angry when I asked him why. I don’t want to leave here. Why do I have to go? I think I have a right to know why I have to leave.” “Perhaps it was the way that you asked him why that was the cause of the problem. It would have confirmed your lack of understanding of the etiquette required when addressing the head of the household. Maybe if you had asked, ‘may I be permitted to know why I am being sent to Scotland’, you might have received a different response.” “What difference does it make? It is still the same question.” “Yes, it might be the same question, but it is a matter of appropriate respect and deference that were not shown in the way that you asked your question. Grandma McGowan will guide your tuition in such matters. They are all part of your being finished appropriately for your entry into society… and by ‘society’, I mean Scottish society, not what passes for society here in India.” “This is where I’ve spent my life. Here is where I want to live. Why do I need to know about Scottish society if I won’t be living there? I’ll only be there for a year or so while Grandma ‘finishes me off’, or whatever she is to do, before I’m back here to continue my life in the place I love.” “Time has a way of changing our lives. Let’s get you safely back to Glasgow and into your grandmother’s care and then see what happens after that.” After sulking and generally being uncooperative, Sarah found she had less than a week to complete her preparations before the carriage with Miss Crowther arrived. It would take Miss Crowther, Sarah, and her parents to the port to await their ship’s arrival. The long, uncomfortable trip to the port had the small entourage arrive late in the afternoon. By then, none of them felt particularly sociable. The rest of the day was spent checking all was in order for the voyage, before Sarah and Miss Crowther joined other passengers to spend the night on board in readiness to set sail on the early morning tide. Slipping its mooring ropes, the ship headed out to sea, leaving the Erskines waving from the dock. As Sarah watched her parents gradually become smaller and disappear from sight, she wondered about her Grandmother Mary. Is this how Grandmother Mary had felt as the Glasgow docks and the young woman she had been slipped away as she embarked on her adventures as a new wife? Mary had always been simply her grandmother. Now, as the ship headed out to sea, for a brief few moments, Sarah allowed herself to think of others. But such thoughts and her reflection on the past were short-lived, overwhelmed by her current resentment. There would be plenty of time for such consideration. Without some degree of luck and fair weather when rounding the southern cape of Africa, it would be six months before her ship docked in Scotland. Heartbroken and not inclined to socialise, the long trip gave Sarah plenty of time to reflect. She either stayed in their cabin or sought out quiet spots on the ship away from the other passengers. There, she let her mind run its course, and wallowed in the emotions almost crushing the life from her. Her mind dredged up everything she had learned from as far back as she could remember. So much information: details of the McGowan family history and, to a lesser extent, the Erskine family, about her heritage and the family’s first years in India. Why feed her all that history when their intent always was to tear her away and send her to a place she had never known – not really known? The more she dwelt on it, the more depressed she became. Her mind kept taking her back to the story of her grandparents’ arrival on the subcontinent, their years spent developing the family’s plantation, and her own parents’ role in the ongoing operation of that plantation. That plantation, the place she loved and called home. That place that no longer would be ‘home’. Sarah’s memory wound back the years, driving her deeper into a black hole of melancholia until she was back amongst the times and stories she most loved. Over those boring six months of the voyage, she often wandered back through the stories implanted in her memories. For the first time, some part of that process caused her recollection of those stories to shift and change a little. Sarah slowly realised those stories she held dear of her parents and her mother’s parents were the foundations of her own story. Her current journey into adulthood had at its foundation a wider tale. A story that began long before she was born. As much as she hated what was happening to her now, her life probably was not so dissimilar to that of Grandmother McGowan’s, the woman with whom she would spend the next few years of her immediate future. Sarah was going back, not only in memory, but physically, to where the real story began two generations ago – in Scotland. Sarah realised her story would not have begun if her Grandfather, Malcolm McGowan, and his wife, Mary, had not gone to India. Had they never purchased their tea plantation, and not employed the plantation manager, Thomas Erskine, who subsequently married the boss’ daughter and became Sarah’s father. So, to truly understand her history, Sarah needed to go back and join Malcolm and Mary on their plantation in India early in a tale that would eventually grow and expand into Sarah’s own story. The End
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