Book excerpt: Magic and transformation in the beauty of a Ukrainian village For seven-year-old Angela, happiness is exploring the verdant countryside around her home in western Ukraine. Her imagination carries her into the spirits of passing birds, into the breath of the wind, into the leaves of her springtime garden. Everything changes when, one morning, she spies her mother crying. As she tries to find out what lies behind the sadness, she is drawn on an extraordinary journey into the secrets of her family, and her parent’s fateful choices. Can Angela lead her mother back to happiness before her innocence is destroyed by the shadows of a dark past? Beautiful, poetic and richly sensory, this is a tale that will haunt and lift its readers. "A strange and beautiful novel" - Esther Freud, author of Mr Mac and Me, Hideous Kinky, Peeless Flats "Readers looking for a classic tale of love and loss will be rewarded with an intoxicating world" - Kirkus Reviews "Rich and poetic in detail, it is an often dreamy, oneiric narrative rooted in an exaltation of nature... A lovely novel" - IndieReader "A literary work of art" – Richmond Magazine