Paula Read

The road to publication of If Only it Hadn't Rained started with the discovery of a small rabbit-skin jacket. It was found by Alex as he was rummaging among his father's belongings after Roland's death. It was so small, it looked more like a child's jacket, says daughter Annie. It had always been kept in a trunk in the garage at the family home in Villeneuve-sur-Lot. Roland had been given the jacket when Buchenwald was liberated in April 1945 by US forces, although he could not remember whether it was given to him by the Red Cross or by the Americans. Annie took the jacket and kept it, also in the garage, in her house in England. Five years later, in 2011, it was Annie's husband, Nathan, who became curious about the jacket. What would become of it once they died? Would it simply be thrown into a skip this small piece of history? They decided to contact the Imperial War Museum in London, ultimately donating the jacket and Roland's papers to the museum. Not all the papers, however. Annie is hoping to complete this long dreamt of project by handing over the rest of Roland's writings to the IWM. They will be kept in the Chopard dossier, another small indelible testimony. If the jacket was the start of what was to become Annie's mission to enable her father to speak, then the relinquishing of his papers to the IWM will complete that mission. Along with the publication of Roland's memoir, this will enable her to feel finally that she has found answers to those questions that should have been asked during his lifetime, and allow Annie to reassure herself that she has done all she can to honour him and his suffering. *** The Hazelnut Grove is a travel book with a difference - and an antidote to Brexit. Published in October 2020 by independent publisher Cinnamon Press under its imprint Leaf by Leaf (https://www.cinnamonpress.com), The Hazelnut Grove is part memoir, part tale of survival. It is based on the story of Paula's cousin and his wife who moved some 20 years ago from the comfort of a two-bedroom cottage in southern England to a mountain-top ruin in northwest Italy. Who has not fantasised about moving to another country and reinventing their life? Luke and Sarah did just that, but they hadn't expected the house next door to be sold to a man who chose to fight them over a two-metre strip of land, the desolate hazelnut grove. Wine and food also flow through this story, happy emollients, in contrast to the scratchy underside of the tale - the menacing neighbour, the deaths of beloved animals and the loneliness of getting to grips with an unfamiliar language and a complex culture.