A little bit about Helen Simonson from her website:
I have lived in America for over twenty years. I have been a long-time and proud resident of Brooklyn and have recently moved with my family to the Washington D.C. area. However, I was born in England, and when I was a teenager, my family achieved the English dream – to move to a house in the country.
East Sussex, with its sleepy villages, medieval smuggling towns, and unique pebble-bank shores is my vision of ‘home.’ My family lives near Rye, a 14th Century smuggling port on a cobbled hill, from which the sea receded long ago. It is marooned in the Romney Marshes (where Charles Dickens’ Pip grew up) yet clings to its designation as a member of the Cinque Ports. Close by are the seaside towns of Hastings and Eastbourne and to the west, the Downs swell up into a ridge of grassy hills topped by the hundred mile trail known as the South Downs Way. It is literary country – Henry James at Lamb House, Rye; Kipling at Batemans, Burwash; Virginia Woolf at Monk’s House, near Lewes – and this heritage was always a great inspiration to me.
As a young woman, I could not wait to go to college in London, or to move three thousand miles away from home to America. Yet I have always carried with me a longing for England that will not fade. I think this dichotomy – between the desire for home and the urge to leave – is of central interest to my life and my writing. —Helen Simonson
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To read the blurb of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand click here
To read my review of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand click here
To read my interview with Helen click here
To visit Helen at her website click here
To catch up with Helen on Goodreads click here
To purchase Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand click here
