Advance Review Book Title “Shadow of the Wheel”
Author: Pat Kelly
436 pages
Historical Fiction
RRP $24.95
ISBN-13:
978-1-925230-64-2
Sid Harta Publishers
Melbourne Australia
About the Book
The mighty
water-wheel at Laxey mines in the Isle of Man has been set in motion. In its
great shadow, Sarah and Patrick have fallen in love. It is a love that must be
kept secret, for Patrick is Irish. Sarah’s mother — Judith — has lost her mind
and blames an Irishman for her husband being imprisoned ‘across the water’ in
Liverpool, where she can never visit him.
The two young lovers desperately desire to wed and be together, but Judith’s increasing madness, which began when she lost some of her childer to a savage disease and deepened on her husband’s incarceration, proved too strong a pull.
Sarah’s deep loyalty to her mother also stands between the lovers, indeed life itself thwarts their every effort to find a way toward their happiness.
Patrick’s friend — Robert — is going to Australia to make his fortune mining for gold and has asked Patrick to accompany him. With no other option and seemingly with the cards stacked against them, Patrick and Sarah are both heartbroken.
Knowing that her mother will never recover from her illness and will always need her support, Sarah tells Patrick he must go with Robert to make a life for himself without her, and to forget her, and the love they share.
The two young lovers desperately desire to wed and be together, but Judith’s increasing madness, which began when she lost some of her childer to a savage disease and deepened on her husband’s incarceration, proved too strong a pull.
Sarah’s deep loyalty to her mother also stands between the lovers, indeed life itself thwarts their every effort to find a way toward their happiness.
Patrick’s friend — Robert — is going to Australia to make his fortune mining for gold and has asked Patrick to accompany him. With no other option and seemingly with the cards stacked against them, Patrick and Sarah are both heartbroken.
Knowing that her mother will never recover from her illness and will always need her support, Sarah tells Patrick he must go with Robert to make a life for himself without her, and to forget her, and the love they share.
About the author
The author was born
in Scotland a year before World War II started, but swears she didn’t cause it
…
In January 1968 she arrived in Australia as a ‘Ten Pound Tourist’ with her, then, husband and four children.
After the breakup of her marriage after twenty-five years the author was contacted by a man named Mike Kelly, whom she had known in her teens and had had no contact with for nearly thirty years. Mike’s marriage having broken up around the same time as the author’s. On learning she was ‘on the loose’, he obtained her phone number by courtesy of his mother — International telephone enquiries — and the author’s mother, so rang to see if she was okay.
One thing led to another, they were married in 1988 and the both returned to the Isle of Man to start a new life. On Mike’s retirement, five years later, they followed the summers and spent half their lives in Australia and the other half in the Isle of Man.
In their months on the island each year, they ran a daffodil and plant nursery and were well known throughout the island for their roadside stall, where they sold their daffodils and plants.
As age caught up with them, they realised it was time to settle somewhere permanently. Being the warmer country, Australia won, and they moved there in 2014, to live in a retirement village in Lakes Entrance — one of the prettiest spots in Australia.
This, they both feel, will suit them until they climb in their boxes (but not for a long time yet) and move on to higher places.
In January 1968 she arrived in Australia as a ‘Ten Pound Tourist’ with her, then, husband and four children.
After the breakup of her marriage after twenty-five years the author was contacted by a man named Mike Kelly, whom she had known in her teens and had had no contact with for nearly thirty years. Mike’s marriage having broken up around the same time as the author’s. On learning she was ‘on the loose’, he obtained her phone number by courtesy of his mother — International telephone enquiries — and the author’s mother, so rang to see if she was okay.
One thing led to another, they were married in 1988 and the both returned to the Isle of Man to start a new life. On Mike’s retirement, five years later, they followed the summers and spent half their lives in Australia and the other half in the Isle of Man.
In their months on the island each year, they ran a daffodil and plant nursery and were well known throughout the island for their roadside stall, where they sold their daffodils and plants.
As age caught up with them, they realised it was time to settle somewhere permanently. Being the warmer country, Australia won, and they moved there in 2014, to live in a retirement village in Lakes Entrance — one of the prettiest spots in Australia.
This, they both feel, will suit them until they climb in their boxes (but not for a long time yet) and move on to higher places.
