My latest book is The Sweetheart Locket, released in ebook in March from Orion Dash with a paperback following later this year. Inspired by the ‘sweetheart jewellery’ members of the armed forces gave to loved ones at home, it’s a Second World War dual-time novel of love, loss and family secrets, wrapped up in courage, loyalty and hope.
Spanning four countries and two continents, most of the story is set in England in places which have shaped my own life. Although I now live in Canada, I lived in England for many years, first to undertake postgraduate studies at University College London in the heart of Bloomsbury.
From student days long ago, London became my favourite city—the red double-decker buses and black taxis I’d seen in films; buildings, roads and parks familiar from my bookish childhood; and several thousand years of history under my feet.
In both the historical and contemporary strands of The Sweetheart Locket, London, and Bloomsbury in particular, have a starring role. Maggie, the heroine of the historical story lives in a hostel in Bloomsbury near where I once did, and important scenes take place in Russell Square Gardens, Russell Square Underground Station and Cartwright Gardens.
When Willow, the forty-something granddaughter Maggie never met, arrives in London from San Francisco for a work trip, she marvels she’s ‘finally here where her gran had once lived and walking along streets she might have known.’
My favourite scene comes from the historical story. It takes place in September 1939, soon after Maggie, a Canadian who’d been sent to school in England, defies her family, tears up her ticket home and decides to stay in London and ‘do her bit’ for the war effort.
Maggie crossed the road by the stately Hotel Russell and turned towards Russell Square where men piled sandbags around nearby buildings. One of the many signs that London was a city at war.
At eighteen, Maggie finds an office job and makes new friends, Evie and her brother, Will. This friendship sets Maggie’s life on a new path—one that later shapes Willow’s life too.
[Maggie] turned into [Russell] Square and found a bench in a sunny corner near a horse chestnut tree, spiny seedpods almost ready to split and scatter mahogany-brown conkers onto the path below.
…Although she’d escaped from her old life, at night in the hostel she couldn’t escape from herself and the thoughts that swarmed in her head like incessant insects. Unlike the men stacking sandbags, she wasn’t doing something useful for the war…Albeit in a different way, it was a kind of prison like her family and school had been.
As she talks with Evie and Will, Maggie realizes that for the first time in her life she’s an independent adult who can make her own decisions.
Will’s gaze was warm, and Maggie’s tummy lurched in a new but not unpleasant way.
Along with those fragments of her ticket, she’d thrown out the girl she used to be but who was the woman she might become?
Maggie in 1939 and Willow in 2019 are both at turning points in their lives. Connected by Maggie’s wartime Royal Air Force sweetheart locket, they’re on a quest discover who they are, what they want and, ultimately, find the courage to follow their dreams.
‘The three of us will be good friends, I know it.’ Evie tucked her arm into Maggie’s.
Maggie knew it too. Her old story was over and the new one had begun.
Connect with Jen: www.jengilroy.com