The story of a farming family and a small community adapting to life in the aftermath of the First World War, surviving the changes that the twentieth century brings to rural Devon.
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The Tamar Valley, 1919: on a small farm a family tussles with the changes the outside world brings to them. The First World War is over and handsome young William Northwood returns home. He tries to forget the horror of the battlefield as he slips back into farming life – immersing himself in the sights, sounds and smells of his beloved countryside.
Another world war begins and shatters the peace and tradition of the parish. A new generation is born and propels the Northwood family on through a tapestry of events – love, death and tragedy are woven lyrically around them, while high overhead the larks sing.
The arrival of the foot-and-mouth epidemic of 2001 tears the heart out of the local community, while the distant past echoes into the modern day.
Will the arrival of Freya Drummond, with her own tragic past, bring new hope to William’s son Tom and the Northwood family? Or will the modern world intrude once more and bring lies, and devastation…?
Larksong is available to purchase from: Silverwood Books | Waterstones | Book Depository
About the author
Trish Dugmore was raised halfway up a mountain in North Wales and later spent much time in Scotland with her family developing a love of being out in the countryside, which has dominated her life ever since.
She has spent winters teaching skiing, summers delivering boats, arranging flowers in St James’ Palace and The Guard’s Chapel, cooking in chalets and shooting lodges, helping start a crab factory in the Outer Hebrides, farming in Devon and also running a bed and breakfast business. Alongside this, Trish, with a creative writing tutor, ran courses at her riverside home for budding authors.
One day she got someone else to do the cooking and joined the novel-writing course. Larksong is the result of this and has taken all the years between the foot-and-mouth epidemic to the COVID-19 pandemic to complete. Now it is finally ready for publication.
