Former Shropshire journalist pens novel
A former Shropshire journalist has published a novel with a plot which links the horrors of the 1990s siege of Sarajevo with the beauty of a village in the Shropshire hills.
Chris Brandon started writing the novel "Thorns" during the infamous siege, but then ran out of steam, only to revisit it two years ago and, with the benefit of hindsight and a new perspective, bring it to completion.
Chris was editor of The Farmer before leaving when the bed and breakfast at her farmhouse home in Cardington, near Church Stretton, took off.
Her novel, written under the pen name of Frances Brand, is set against the backdrop of the Shropshire hills in the 1990s with the action moving between there and Bosnia.
Chris says it is a dark tale of two entwining love stories, a stark account of a man's struggle to overcome the trauma of escaping from the siege of Sarajevo, hoping to recover in the apparent peace of a small Shropshire farm.
"Farming and its problems play a big part in the story," she said.
However the thread of darkness which began in the Balkans reappears when his act of kindness to a vulnerable girl drags him in to a family dispute.
"The book is pure fiction, but people may well recognise the village from its situation in a bowl among the hills," says Chris, who says the setting was inspired by her own surroundings.
Siege
She started writing the novel when the siege of Sarajevo was at its height.
"Something about the awful situation in the Balkans just got into my head. I found it hard to understand how all this could be happening again in the last decade of the 20th century.
"But it was a very busy time for me. I'd just taken over running The Farmer and we'd started the bed and breakfast and I simply ran out of time. The book wasn't going as I wanted and after about 14 chapters it sort of ran into the ground."
She forgot about it, but found it a couple of years ago and looked at it again.
"The benefit of hindsight and the continuing search for missing victims in Bosnia, plus the genocide trials at The Hague, pulled it all into perspective."
She said the novel was also a kind of tribute to the Shropshire landscape.
"Our visitors are just wowed by it. I'm lucky to look out every day on a magnificent view which is constantly changing. I've lived here for more than 30 years and have developed a deep love of the place. "
She is now working on a book on the subject of motor neurone disease – her husband died from MND three years ago and she said she was following with sympathetic interest the case of Shrewsbury MND victim Noel Conway.
"This will be a very different style of book. It is a wicked disease which I call the creeping killer."
Thorns is available online in paperback at £9.99 or ebook, and from independent bookshops.
