Home Truths

Should happy families be such hard work?

When their uncle Django’s 75th birthday is interrupted by a mysterious visitor with a shocking revelation, sisters Fen, Pip and Cat find that the man who was like a father to them is now a stranger.

Their mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver when they were young leaving the three sisters to be raised by their devoted, eccentric uncle Django. No matter what problems they’ve encountered – relationships, work, starting families, bringing up babies and step-kids – they’ve always had each other to depend on. Until now.

Family matters…doesn’t it?

A Personal Note from Freya

I really struggled with this book – not with what to write (thankfully, that came easily) but with having to write it. Not just because its structure was so much more involved – here I juggled three main characters all of who had to have level pegging. But because once again, life was imitating art – my father-in-law and my dearest friend were both fighting cancer at the time. They both died within 6 months of each other. Sometimes, reviewers can be infuriating. You wonder how they dare review a book they obviously haven’t bothered to read. One journalist simply passed off my novel, saying “mothers don’t leave their children – they just don’t”. Well, actually, they DO. And many readers wrote to me with their own experiences. I was really ready to see the back of the McCabes when I finished this novel. But readers still ask me to write another one. And it’s only now, two books on, that I do quite fancy revisiting this family – perhaps writing a prequel, set in the early 1970s, when Django first takes charge of those three little girls.