The secret Magda carried to her grave threatens her daughter's happiness in this wonderful saga set in Pontypridd. Stateless and destitute after World War II, Magda Janek settled in Pontypridd, in the hope of building a new life for herself and her baby daughter, Helena. All Magda had to give Helena were the ambitions she had once cherished for herself; dreams cruelly snatched from her while she was still in her teens. But 1960s Pontypridd was a bright, vibrant, and very different world to the one Magda had been born into. At 21 Helena Janek had beauty, confidence, education, friends, and opportunities beyond even her mother's wildest imaginings. With a university degree behind her, a coveted teaching post in her old grammar school, and marriage to the love of her life, Dr. Eddie John, the son of an old Pontypridd family to look forward to, Helena couldn't have been happier. Until tragedy struck. A tragedy that robbed her of the only family she had ever known and everything she had ever believed in; uncovering a bitter secret Magda had carried to her grave. A secret that threatened to destroy Helena's future, sanity and love for Eddie just as surely as it had destroyed her peace of mind. And all Eddie could do was stand by impotently, no longer able to even reach Helena, let alone help her.
CATRIN COLLIER/KATHERINE JOHN/CARO FRENCH/KATHERINE HARDY -
My most bemused moment. When someone commented, "It will be wonderful for Pontypridd when you die." (Many of my novels are set in the town)
My best "putting in place moment". When someone joined a queue at a signing session in Waterstones and waited ten minutes to say, "I don't want a book, love, but as you're here for two hours, look after my shopping for me." - I did.
My proudest moment, when I discovered my Catrin Collier novel, One Last Summer, based on my Prussian born mother's wartime diaries was named recommended reading for adults by the Holocaust Day Memorial Trust.
My new novel, Bobby's Girl, set in America during in 1968 - the era of the anti-Vietnam War and, Civil Rights movements and student protests will be published in the autumn of 2011.
