The Chalky Sea

Literature & Fiction

synopsis

Synopsis

Two troubled people in a turbulent world. In July 1940, Gwen Collingwood drops her husband at the railway station, knowing she may never see him again. Two days later her humdrum world is torn apart when her sleepy English seaside town is subjected to the first of many heavy bombing attacks. In Ontario, Canada, Jim Armstrong is uncertain whether to volunteer for the army. When he uncovers the secret his fiancée has been keeping from him his decision is clear. A few weeks later he is on a ship bound for England. Gwen is forced to confront the truth about her past and her own feelings for her husband. Jim battles with a bewildering and hostile world far removed from the cosy life of his Canadian farm. War brings horror and loss to each of them – can it also bring change and salvation?

bio

Author Biography

Clare Flynn writes historical fiction with compelling characters.and a strong sense of time and place. Her books often deal with characters who are displaced - forced out of their comfortable lives and familiar surroundings. She is a graduate of Manchester University where she read English Language and Literature. After a career in international marketing, working on brands from nappies to tinned tuna and living in Paris, Milan, Brussels and Sydney, she ran her own consulting business for 15 years and now lives in Eastbourne where she writes full-time – and can look out of her window and see the sea. When not writing and reading, Clare loves to paint with watercolours and grabs any available opportunity to travel - sometimes under the guise of research.

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Author Insight

War at the seaside

Nowadays people think of Eastbourne on the English Sussex coast as a quiet seaside down with an elderly population. It is a little known fact that the town was in the frontline for most of the Second World War. The first bombs fell on July 7th 1940 - a month before the London Blitz got going – but even after Hitler called off the invasion of Britain the town continued to be pounded regularly until March 1944.

Book Excerpt

The Chalky Sea

In the distance, the faint sound of anti-aircraft fire grew louder. The low buzzing thrum of planes – ours or theirs? Was the invasion starting now? As the questions were forming in her head they were interrupted by the boom-boom-boom of a series of rapid explosions.

She spilled her tea on her dress as she jumped to her feet. Behind her the windows were rattling in their frames. The house faced south so she couldn’t see the town, but already a plume of smoke was moving out over the sea. The war had come to Eastbourne. There had been no warning.

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Clare Flynn

The Chalky Sea

Synopsis

Author Biography

Author Insight

War at the seaside

Book Excerpt

The Chalky Sea

Comment on this Bubble