The Sea Change

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1971: A tsunami of any kind can turn your live upside down. Then where do you belong?

ISBN: 978-0241964156
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What you need to know before your trail

Alice is newly married and is sitting on Kanyakumari beach in the south of India, when she sees a wave on the horizon, coming closer and getting bigger as it surges forward. Her husband is nowhere to be seen.

On the other side of the world, unhappily estranged from her daughter, is Alice’s mother, Violet. Forced to leave the idyllic Wiltshire village, Imber, in which she grew up after it was requisitioned by the army during World War Two, Violet is haunted by the shadow of the man she loved and the wilderness of a home that lies in ruins.

A tsunami of one kind or another causes chaos to these two women and causes ripples in lives that will have far-reaching consequences.1971

Locations

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Travel Guide

England – Wiltshire – Imber

This is one of the most fascinating places in a novel, and in real life. Imber in Wiltshire was requisitioned by the army during the war when the Ministry of Defence who bought the land, forced everyone living there to leave. The village remains a ghost village today which can only be visited a few times a year if booked in advance. American troops were moved in and the site used for practice of a variety of war techniques.
Such a piece of history woven into a very personal story takes a true life tale and makes it a real asset to see featured in the novel. Imber is still very much a neglected and remote village still owned by the army. There’s a circle around it on the map with little detail of what’s inside. A circle of mystery, fog and intrigue…

India – Kanyakumari

Alice has been travelling across Asia with her boyfriend when they decide to get married on a whim. The sense of freedom, adventure and more turns to danger when the tsunami hits and she loses sight of her husband.

Kanyakumari is a coastal town in the state of Tamil Nadu on India’s southern tip. It was known as Cape Comorin during British rule and is a noted pilgrimage site because of its Bagavathi Amman Temple, dedicated to a consort of Shiva.

Trail Gallery

Booktrailer Review

Susan @thebooktrailer and @thetravread

This is quite a haunting read. It’s about lost landscapes and the feeling of belonging you have to where you live and where you call home. Both places in the novel are taken away from those who live there. Imber was appropriated by the British Military in 1943 when they bought the land and forced those who lived there to leave. The land was then used for years as a practice ground for the soldiers stationed there. Never mind the church with the graves of those who died there or the sense that if you’ve lived there all your life, you might want to stay. It’s a story of people having their landscape robbed from them and it’s a painful story.

When added to the story of a tsunami, another landscape brutally and forcibly taken from those who lived there, and it’s a story of scars, healing processes and hope amidst destruction and despair. The two stories read as opposite stories of one spectrum yet the two locations come across well and they are very much characters in the novel themselves. The Sea Change is the perfect title for this story and with the gifts I received from The Travelling Reader, along with this book, its themes of home, love, loss, and misunderstanding are evoked with the sights, tastes and aromas of two locations from opposite ends of the earth but with a story with a heart at its centre.