Cider Lane: Of silence and stars

A novel of the lost and the broken. Of sharing the silences, talking to the stars, and the importance of tin openers.

A troubled young woman witnesses her parents final moments. Dying as their crashed car is consumed in flames. Grief-stricken lost and alone her mind withdraws into darkness. Finding empty solace within the walls of her subconscious. She walks away carrying with her a terrible secret she hides even from herself.

She follows no direction, save one away from people, because people hurt, people bully and people ask questions. Questions she does not wish to answer, even to herself. Suffering from shock and the beginnings of exposure she just keeps walking.

Miles away in Scotland, A man lays beneath the stars, conversing with them as if they are old friends. Once a brilliant academic he has lost everything and is now living in the shadows of his a broken life wracked with the haunting griefs of his past. He walks the roads and sleeps in lost abandoned places. Hitching rides, he carries with him the ghosts of the past. Remembering a place where the cider apples grow in the summer sunshine.

Ahead of them both in the depths of Summerset there lays an abandoned cottage in an orchard off Cider Lane. A place forgotten by the world, broken down and half ruined. Drawing them both together unwittingly.

It is a haven, a place to rest and regrowth in the summer sun. Stumbling upon it the girl sets about surviving, free of spiteful people and their dangerous questions.

When the traveller arrives for the apple harvest, he found in the lost young girl someone as broken and damaged by the world as he once was.

Together perhaps they can save each other. Amid ruins of the past.

But first, they must learn to trust once more in another. If only they can. While the world is ever waiting to crash in on them once more.

Meanwhile, the police search for the girl, and a young officer with his own dark past is determined to save her from the fate that befell his sister.

And the world never forgets anyone for long.



Winner of the Publisher's Book Club Book of the Month award, November 2015

Dark with humour and a cynic's view of the world around us, among the hidden forgotten. The world where everyone must conform to the rules, and what happens to those that chose to walk away.



'...An absorbing, melancholy, read...'

'...altogether beautiful, tragic and sad...'

'...thought-provoking...'