KINDRED SPIRITS - by Lucy McCarraher, author "The Book of Balanced Living", "Blood and Water"

“Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think.
It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.”

Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

The plot

Having lived in London for most of her 47 years, Mo is finally persuaded by her husband Jack that they should move to a more tranquil and balanced lifestyle in the country. Her older children have left home, Lily is not getting on at her South London primary school and two-year old Felix suffers badly from asthma. Jack's birth mother finds him a partnership in a South Norfolk village near her and a 17th century farmhouse comes with the job.

Mo is already uneasy about the relationship developing between Jack and the attractive mother he has only recently met, and tries to resist the pressure to move, but when they look over Stargate Farm for the first time, she finds the house strangely familiar. No sooner have they settled in and Mo gets stuck into researching a reality tv series on work-life balance, than the psychic mother of a new local friend tells her a "gentleman from the other side" is asking her to put right a wrong that was done to him in the 1940s, and Mo herself begins to have strange flashbacks.

Their idyllic life in the country falls seriously apart when Lily gets into trouble at school for having an imaginary friend, Mo's new friends are snubbed by her London guests and Jack is accused of sexually harrassing a young patient.

Interspersed with this present day story is the diary of a Land Girl who arrives from London to work on the same farm during World War 2. Her love life is almost as dramatic as the war, and her emotional maturity develops through the contemporary authors she reads, from L.M. Montgomery and Louisa May Alcott to Daphne du Maurier and Margaret Mitchell. Dottie's Diary, it turns out, belongs to her great nephew who also lives in Great Haddeston and is directing an amateur production of Hamlet, in which Mo is to play Gertrude.

To sort out the mess she finds herself in, Mo tracks down the remaining characters of the 1940s diary and discovers that the 60-year old miscarriage of justice underlies the village feuds and infighting which are tearing her own family apart. Time travel, telepathy and television all play their part in re-balancing the work and life of Mo's family, and returning harmony to the Great Haddeston community.

The Inspiration

The minute I stepped inside the 17th century farmhouse we eventually bought, I knew I had come home. Despite major problems in the move from South Norwood in London to South Norfolk - including the owners taking it off the market at one point - I never had the slightest doubt that the house would be ours, and in the end everything fell into place with ease.

I've always had a romantic idea of living in the country, and the reality of doing so hasn't tarnished this at all. Our house is not especially beautiful, nor our village what estate agents would call "sought after", but the age and ambience of both continually intrigue and inspire me. I frequently wonder about the generations of families who have lived here, the personalities and incidents that the thick clay lump walls have surrounded and the high pantile roof given shelter to.

So when my psychic friend Mike came to stay soon after we'd moved in and, on a fusion of red wine and a violent summer evening thunder storm, was contacted by the spirit of a man who gave us his name and said he would like me to tell his story and right the injustice of some incident he was unfairly blamed for in the village in 1944, I was rather excited. Among other things, he told Mike that I should move my study (which was in the attic at the time) to the bow-windowed room at the end of the house because it would be my "window on the world"; that his story was a gift to me; and that I should look forhim on the left hand side of the church yard. I completely believe Mike has authentic experiences of this kind, though I was somewhat sceptical about their significance, particularly in relation to me, but after he had left, I couldn't resist taking the dog on an evening stroll down to the church. To my shock, on the left hand side, I found a small, flat, plaque overgrown by long grass with an empty stone urn at its head, in memory of our ghost.

I asked around and put a request for information in the Parish Newsletter. I was very shortly contacted by the man's elderly nephew and then his son, who lives abroad but just happened to be on a rare visit home. Reading between the lines of what I learned, I got an idea of what might have happened - a death, no will, missing funds, the wrong person blamed, family divisions, lives blighted. With no real evidence and the main protagonists passed away, there was nothing I could do to prove my theory or reveal "the truth".

But the story remained rattling around in my head, so when Blood and Water was approved for publication by MNW, I knew where my next plot would come from. The characters and story of Kindred Spirits are entirely fictional, but like B&W, takes certain aspects of reality as the jumping off point for fiction. The house I describe is very much like my own, as is the village. One or two friends know that I'm pillaging aspects of their lives for my characters. I'd love to think I might have conjoured up some emotions or experiences stored in the fabric of the house, but I don't knowingly share my heroine's psychic powers.

Despite my inability to bring him "justice" in any real sense, my ghost has brought me the gift of inspiration - not least from the view beyond my "window on the world" where I now sit and write - and I hope he enjoys my flights of fantasy in Kindred Spirits.

For a running commentary on the writing of Kindred Spirits, check into my blogsite and leave me your comments.