Lockeridge author Sorrel Pitts’ latest novel – Broken Shadows – was published on 6 February and is going to have a ‘proper’ launch in the area around which it is set. Whilst not being in any way autobiographical (or so Sorrel says) Broken Shadows takes it’s inspiration from here, this area, where Sorrel grew up. The launch will be in Lockeridge’s ‘Who’d A Thought It’, a stone’s throw from where Sorrel lived and went to school. On (Saturday) 24 February from ‘7 until late’, and the ‘Who’d A’ is easy to find as it’s the only pub still open in the Upper Kennet Valley to the West of Marlborough and it’s right in the middle of the village.
Broken Shadows is a story of crime, love, family, tragedy and reawakening set around many local features including the eerie and evocative Devil’s Den on Fyfield Down. A crime novel, about Tom, a 14 year old boy whose younger brother, Callum, goes missing from his Wiltshire village. Six months later, Tom finds Callum’s body at the Shadowing Stones, a Neolithic henge on nearby Marlborough Down. Tom’s father is the main suspect but never charged, and a year later his mother suddenly kills herself. Bewildered and traumatised, Tom decides to leave and build a new life in Australia.
Crime, intrigue, love, family – and this area. But it’s also about coming home. Almost three decades after landing in Australia Tom hears that his father is dying of cancer and realises this may be his last chance to find out the truth. He returns to Wiltshire in the depths of winter. And soon catches up with a school friend of long ago, Anna, also returned from abroad to recover from an operation. Whilst each are with their own partners in lives elsewhere in the world, being back in their formative area creates change, guilt, conflicting emotions and more.
“I never set out to write ‘a crime novel” states Sorrel, when asked about her starting point when the story began to coalesce. But the murder of Tom’s brother Callum is the lynch pin around which several important themes revolve. The story explores the changing face of rural landscapes and the social class of their populations. Tom vividly remembers how the village was 50 years ago compared to how it is now – rediscovering it after several decades away on the opposite side of the world. It also explores themes of marriage and children/childlessness, exile and the issues that women tend to face as they enter their forties.
This is Sorrel’s second novel, it must be ‘in the genes’ as her father, Denis Pitts was also a novelist, a journalist of international repute, (conducted the only TV interview of Clement Atlee) and possibly best known around here as the writer, presenter and creator of an edition of BBC’s ‘Omnibus’ series, broadcast in October 1969 entitled ‘What the Hell Ever Happens in Marlborough‘. An iconic piece of broadcast history, about Marlborough, but more ‘of it time’. Worth seeing if ever a screening opportunity arises, which happens occasionally.
Broken Shadows will be on sale in the ‘Who’d A’ on 24 Feb but is also available from Marlborough’s White Horse Bookshop and Devizes Books in Devizes. Or, click here to see excellent prepublication reviews and purchase as either paperback or e-book Kindle form on Amazon. You can see more reviews on Goodreads – click here.
Sorrel added: A curious thing happened recently. I’ve always wanted to go to the den for the winter solstice, but never found anyone to accompany me. But this winter (2023), a musician I’d only recently met, told me he always visits it on the solstice, and he invited me to join him. We met at 5am and walked over the downs in the dark. The wind blew hard as we picked our way down the sarsen-filled valley with the sheep scattering around us, their eyes reflecting the glow of our head torches. We stood in front of the stones as the sun rose – that’s when I took the picture below (cover pic). It was an incredible experience, but what struck me most was its timing. In all the years he’d been going to the den at solstice, my friend told me, he’d been never seen another soul there. How had I managed to meet the only person in the world who did go, and on that particular solstice, just before Broken Shadows was finally published?
Reader, you decide…….
Sherlock Holmes and the Poison Wood at The Watermill – inventive, entertaining, energetic
