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The Olive Garden Choir by Leah Fleming
About the author
After careers in teaching, catering, running a market stall, stress management courses in the NHS as well as being a mother of four, Leah Fleming found her true calling as a storyteller.
She lives in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales but spends part of the year marinating her next tale from an olive grove on her favourite island of Crete.
Follow Leah:
Twitter: @LeahleFleming
Facebook: @Leah Fleming
Wesbite: leahfleming.co.uk
About the book
An evocative novel of secrets, love and redemption under the Greek sun.
On the beautiful island of Santaniki, close to Crete, it’s not all white sands and sunshine.
When retired bookseller Ariadne Blunt suggests the English residents form a choir, there are groans of resistance.
After a little persuasion, the group gather in Ariadne’s olive garden to rehearse, but each member of this choir has their own struggles and secrets. Ariadne’s partner, Hebe, is in failing health. Clive struggles to accept the loss of his wife while Della, the Pilates teacher, drinks too much. Then there is Mel, the real songbird amongst them, English wife of a taverna owner who hides her talent until the choir inspires her to raise her voice once more.
In this tiny community, the choir brings the residents together like never before in a bittersweet tale of love and loss – and how life can begin again when you let go of the past.
EXTRACT
Ariadne Blunt swept up the bougainvillaea leaves from the veranda of her villa on the island of Santaniki, then stopped to admire the view down the rocky slope of olive trees to the sparkling sea, where the faint outline of the big island glinted in the late September sunshine. Now the summer visitors were returning for school terms in Britain, local activities would start again.
Tonight at the first book-club meeting of the season members would provide a summary of their summer reading or single out a book for discussion, and she wanted them to sit on the veranda in the warmth of sunset.
Looking up, she saw the fledgling swallows peeking out of their nest in the corner.
It was always a relief when Hick and Hetty returned to raise two broods before their long flight back to Africa. Their safe arrival each year heralded spring, but it was always a sad moment when the young flew off. Their mess was contained in a bucket, but she’d clean it in case some eagle-eyed member thought it unsightly or unhygienic.
The group consisted of a motley assortment of women, mostly middle-aged and retired, but there was a sprinkling of younger ones, who could be relied on to vary the usual selection of middle-brow literature. As a former bookseller, Ariadne assumed leadership to check any snide comments on choices, but tonight she had something important to say.
It had all started when she’d seen a family coming off the ferry, dressed in tunics and jeans, the women in hijabs, reminding her of the drownings off the coasts of Libya and Turkey. Some eastern islands were swamped with refugees but Crete was too far away for that. Most of the survivors had nothing but what the aid agencies had found for them. Here on Santaniki, she hoped they would be found temporary accommodation and seasonal work, and wondered what she could do to help.
Her thoughts were interrupted by her friend and housemate, Hebe Wilson. ‘Shall I set the cups out? It is this evening, isn’t it?’
‘Yes ‒ I told you so this morning. No apologies yet, so we’ll need seven or eight chairs. I thought we might have some wine as it’s the first gathering.’
‘Isn’t the garden looking good?’ Hebe nodded in the direction of the path where the oleander borders were still in late blossom. ‘Shall I cut some flowers?’
‘If you like, but try not to make a trail of dust. I’ve just swept.’
Ariadne liked everything to look tidy for their guests but Hebe had a knack of spreading clutter, forgetting to wipe up and leaving her gardening tools on thetables. It was only a small villa, among a row of grander ones, of which some were only half finished because of the recession. She sighed. The building trade had collapsed and the glory days of foreigners buying second homes were over.
Houses were getting harder to sell. She shook herself. Stop wool-gathering, for heaven’s sake! Go and get smartened up, before the early birds appear..
Buy Links:
Amazon: https://amzn.to/2T1mKmW
Kobo: http://bit.ly/2SHh7Lm
Google Play: http://bit.ly/2ScX6XG
iBooks: https://apple.co/2ScXrJW
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