"Beattie explores our humanity in its beauty and brokenness through women's voices. Fictional voices of the marginalised have been inserted in the recorded history of the country, not to create an alternative history but to add to its rich, multi-faceted texture." (Chiedza Musengezi, Zimbabwean poet and author)

"Msasa trees provided dappled shade for Jenny's tea party. April sunshine dribbled through the leaves onto suntanned arms. The frangipanis were in bloom ..."

This is the scene that greets Scottish doctor Morag soon after her arrival in Salisbury in the 1950s. Jenny is an English wife and mother trapped in an increasingly violent marriage and secretly in love with another man. Soon, Beatrice will come to work as Jenny's maid and nanny to her children. Over the next twenty years these three women will form deep bonds of affection, but can their loyalty to one another survive as the facade of white suburban life is shattered by war?

In a novel that moves from the Firth of Clyde in Scotland to pre-independence Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), from the illusory idyll of colonial privilege to the traumas of guerrilla war, Beattie explores the hidden lives and untold stories of those caught up in the dying years of white rule in Africa.

"Rhodesia is sleep-walking towards its devastating civil war. Three women become entangled in that war and in relationships that harbour the seeds of tragedy. With great sensitivity and insight, Tina Beattie tells a haunting story of love and war that will long linger in the mind." (Kay Powell, author of Then a Wind Blew).

"A compelling and captivating read. The story is a fascinating weave of black and white characters. I loved it despite scenes that deeply disturbed me, having been through those times. Tina Beattie has captured an essence of the time with precise and knowledgeable detail." (Angus Shaw, Zimbabwean writer and war correspondent)

About the Author
Tina Beattie spent much of her early life in Africa. She was born and grew up in Lusaka, Zambia, and also lived in Kenya and Zimbabwe before moving to Bristol with her husband and four young children in 1988. She has been described as "one of the most brilliant and original Catholic theologians" in Britain (Ashley Beck, The Pastoral Review), though she was a latecomer to academic life. She left school at 15 and finally began her undergraduate studies at the University of Bristol in 1991, the year her youngest child started school. Tina has given public lectures around the world and her academic publications include monographs published by Routledge, Oxford University Press and Continuum, as well as numerous journal articles and contributions to books. She is a well-known public commentator and a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4's Thought for the Day. Tina's first creative passion has always been writing fiction, and in recent years she has returned to that enduring love. One reviewer described her novel The Good Priest (2019) as "an absolute masterpiece" and wrote that he would "place this book in the top three fiction books I have read." (GoodReads) Another wrote, "This is one of the most enthralling books that I have read this year. ... I was utterly absorbed from beginning to end." (Breakaway Reviewers) In 2021 Tina left her full-time post as Professor of Catholic Studies at the University of Roehampton in London to dedicate her time to research and writing. Her second novel, Between Two Rivers (publication date February 2022) explores life in Rhodesia from the last years of colonialism in the 1950s to the trauma of civil war in the 1970s. Zimbabwean writer and war correspondent Angus Shaw describes it as "a compelling and captivating read. ... There is passion, love and violence ... I loved it despite scenes that deeply disturbed me, having been through those times." Tina now lives near Rye on the south coast of England, where she swims in the sea and draws inspiration from the wild beauty of the dunes.

Reviews
"Rhodesia is sleep-walking towards its devastating civil war. Three women become entangled in that war and in relationships that harbour the seeds of tragedy. With great sensitivity and insight, Tina Beattie tells a haunting story of love and war that will long linger in the mind." (Kay Powell, author of "Then a Wind Blew"); "A compelling and captivating read. The story is a fascinating weave of black and white characters. I loved it despite scenes that deeply disturbed me, having been through those times. She has captured an essence of the time with precise and knowledgeable detail." (Angus Shaw, Zimbabwean writer and war correspondent)



Book Information
ISBN 9781739974411
Author Tina Beattie
Format Paperback
Page Count 456
Imprint Christabel Press
Publisher Troubador Publishing