by Trish Morey
A kiss that spoke of love.
A kiss that spoke of happiness.
A kiss that promised forever.
Acknowledgements
Where do you begin to give thanks for a miracle? I know Stone Castles is ‘just’ a book but, to me, it sure feels like a miracle.
2013 was one moody cow of a year. On the one hand, I had travel aplenty. January in the Middle East courtesy of my sister’s UN posting to the Golan Heights, so a month exploring Israel, Turkey, Jordan and Dubai. August saw me in Wellington for the Romance Writers of New Zealand conference, and I spent October with hubby in the UK and Southern Ireland to celebrate our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Fabulous adventures.
Somehow, miraculously, the downside waited for me to be at home. In March, my father moved from the independent living unit we’d only just moved him and Mum into the December before, and from there he moved straight into a nursing home. Straight into high care. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Do not get better.
The speed at which it happened was a huge shock to us all, but I have to say, Dad’s new home was amazing. I have to thank the Onkaparinga Valley Residential Care facility and all its amazing staff so much for the way they looked after my darling Dad those last few months. And yes, there is something of the way I saw you handle your residents in Stone Castles. I am in awe of the work you do (though in no hurry to get there – sorry!). The Kadina Nursing Home was a figment of my imagination, although I am sure there are gorgeous places just like it, filled with Molly Kernahans who do what they do best. Care for the ones we love.
To the late Phyllis Somerville, who penned Not Only in Stone, the book that is Pip’s gran’s favourite, thank you, as my father also adored that book. As a descendant of a Cornish miner, it filled in the blanks of the lives his ancestors must have led. It may be fiction, but it’s a South Australian, and indeed, a Yorke Peninsula, icon.
To my BIL, Neill Morey, who knows more about how to stop a header in its tracks (and how to get it moving again) than you can poke a stick at, thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise. I really enjoyed our dinners discussing the possibilities, and it wasn’t just because of the wine. To nephews Ben and Callan, thanks for letting me borrow your names. It was so good to have character names I couldn’t forget while the rest was purely fiction!
Thanks too to my cousin, David Johns, who filled in blanks about life at Melton where my own memory was shady. It was a beautiful home your folks had out there and I will forever treasure those memories of my visits in my heart.
To the Clare Writers’ Festival – because while the memories go back, the spark of this story started right there – I owe you a huge vote of thanks. It was November 2013 and we’d just that week farewelled my brother, so it had been a tough one, but I gave my romance writing workshop and talked about how important the senses are, and recounted the story of receiving my aunt and uncle’s kitchen dresser all the way over in Canberra where we then lived, and opening up that door and being transported into the past, all because it smelled exactly of the kitchen way back there on the farm in a tiny dot of a town on the Yorke Peninsula. The kitchen of a house that no longer existed. A story I’d told so many times during my workshops since I’d been published, but this time was clearly the charm.
Because on the way home from the festival, I said to hubby that I was going to write that story, of a girl who comes home and there is nothing left but a few bits of furniture and she opens that door and is hurtled right back there, into her past, only unlike me, her past was a place filled with tragedy and betrayal. And so, seized by a compulsion that maybe only writers understand, I started.
Daft really.
I had books lined up waiting to be written. Books I’d contracted long before and had to put aside in the turmoil 2013 became, but this was the book I simply had to write, because my Dad was fading and there was a story there and I felt compelled to tell it.
I read the early chapters to Dad. He wasn’t terribly responsive so he wasn’t awfully critical either. A bonus, I guess. I wrote at his bedside. He died before I had more than those first few chapters, months before the story had sold.
But since then he’s been riding shotgun on my shoulder, making this book happen. I know, because I’ve felt him there, every step of the way.
To Carol Marinelli, who read the early pages and who said, finish it; to Fiona McArthur who gave me great advice about babies and twins and the icky stuff, and to Barbara Hannay who gave me a heap of great advice, thank you all, from the bottom of my heart.
For Haylee Nash, Commissioning Editor at Pan Macmillan Australia, thank you for reaching out and seeing the heart in the story at such an early stage and, more than that, for having the faith in me to deliver.
To Fiona McArthur (again!), who laid it straight while I dithered, and said, ‘Clouds are like opportunities. You can just watch them float by.’ Thank you for making me throw out a grappling hook into this one!
To my fabulous Maytoners, Carol Marinelli, Barbara Hannay, Anne Gracie, Marion Lennox, Alison Roberts, Meredith Webber, Kelly Hunter, Lilian Darcy and Fiona McArthur (yet again) who are there for me 24/7 and who cheered me on from the sidelines while I was stuck in my writing cave, thank you all. I have never known a more awesomely generous and talented bunch of women and I am so blessed to be in your company.
To my editor, Libby Turner, my copy editor, Lachlan Jobbins, and all the team at Pan Macmillan Australia, thank you for your invaluable input in helping my words shine, and for the most gorgeous cover a story could get.
For anyone who is half tempted to take a trip over to the Yorke Peninsula after reading this book, I say – go! You won’t be sorry. And if you are looking for a gorgeous B&B like the one Pip stayed in, you will most definitely find it. Hubby and I stayed in a character B&B that was so perfectly romantic, I wanted to base the one in my book on it, and thankfully the owners agreed. It’s Redwing Bed and Breakfast and you’ll find it easily enough with a search. Their beautiful home also provides the perfect backdrop for weddings, and so you might just recognise the setting for Pip and Luke’s big day and you might even want to tie the knot there too. Who could blame you?
For my amazing and long suffering husband, Gavin, and our daughters, Jacqui, Steph, Ellen and Claire, who have lived through more than thirty of my deadlines and the ranting, emotional, scary-haired women this writer becomes, and who somehow still love me, thank you. I love you all right back.
And last, but by no means least, to the reader, thank you for picking up this book. Stone Castles is a real book of the heart for me.
I hope it touches yours.
About Trish Morey
A USA Today bestselling author, Trish Morey has written more than thirty stories that have sold nearly six million copies and have been translated into more than twenty-six languages worldwide. Three times nominated and two times winner of RWA’s Romantic Book of the Year Award, and finalist in RWAmerica’s RITA Award, Trish is loving writing bigger stories set closer to home.
Mother of four daughters, Trish lives with her family and assorted pets in the beautiful Adelaide Hills region of South Australia.
You can visit Trish and join her newsletter for news of upcoming releases at www.trishmorey.com or email Trish at [email protected]. Trish loves hearing from her readers.
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This is a work of fiction. Characters, institutions and organisations mentioned in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously without any intent to describe actual conduct.
First published 2014 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited
1 Market Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 2000
Copyright © Trish Morey 2014
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available
from the National Library of Australia
http://catalogue.nla.gov.au
EPUB format: 9781743532881
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