I am excited to share an extract today ~ thanks to Rachel’s Random Resources for organizing.
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Genre: Historical Fiction/Historical Romance
Publication Date: October 9, 2024
Estimated Page Count: 354
Standalone Novel in a collection of novels about WW2 in SE Asia entitled Echoes of Empire
Extract from Chapter 1 of The Lotus House.
Nancy Drayton, an American nurse, living on Lake Sebu in the Philippines in 1960, is visited early one morning by a stranger. Angel Aquina.
Out on the veranda, Nancy invited Angel to take a seat in one of the two basket chairs overlooking the lake. Most new visitors exclaimed at the beauty of the surroundings, and Nancy once again drunk in the scenery. The morning mist was still rising from the water, softening everything, making the scene look like a pleasing watercolour. But Angel didn’t comment on the view.
‘So, Miss Aquina, would you like some tea or coffee?’
Angel shook her head. ‘I cannot stay long. The ship to Manila leaves this afternoon and I need to get a bus to the port before lunchtime.’
‘So, please tell me what this is all about.’
‘I was… well, I had an arrangement with Larry. We were… how do you say… companions. Larry died last week. He’d stayed on in Luzon after the war, you know. I would have happily gone to the States with him, but for some reason he never wanted to leave the Philippines.’
Nancy wasn’t sorry to hear of Larry’s death, in fact she felt no emotion at all towards him now.
‘And how did you know my address?’ she asked the woman.
Angel shrugged. ‘Larry knew it, of course. He said he used to come down here and see you sometimes.’
‘See me?’ Nancy said, chills running right through her. ‘He never came to see me once. I thought he must have eventually gone home to Texas.’
Sometimes, over the past few years, she’d had a sensation of being watched. When she’d been sitting on the veranda, or cycling to work, shopping in the market, taking out the children from the orphanage, she’d happen to notice a dark figure in the distance, in the periphery of her vision, but if she looked again, it would have disappeared. She recalled those moments now.
‘Oh yes,’ Angel said, as if contradicting her. ‘He would sometimes take himself off and come down to Mindanao. He had an aeroplane, you see. An old heap. He used to go about the islands with it.’
Nancy caught a wistful look creeping into Angel’s eyes as she spoke of Larry.
‘You were fond of him, weren’t you?’ she asked.
Angel nodded. ‘He was good to me,’ she said. ‘You know, Larry never got over the war. The Death March on Bataan, the prison camps. He would take drugs to deaden the pain. In the end they killed him. He was a wreck of a man towards the end.’
Nancy shuddered. Angel’s words took her back to a time and a place she had no desire to revisit. She’d struggled for years to banish those terrible wartime memories: the fierce fighting she’d witnessed, the death marches and massacres, the brutality of the Japanese, the privations of the prison camps.
‘So,’ she said, taking a deep breath and bringing herself back to the present. ‘You said you had something for me?’
‘Yes, I have. Larry asked me to bring them to you, once he’d passed. He said he’d regretted what he did during the war, and he wanted to make amends.’
Angel fished in the big leather bag she carried over her shoulder and pulled out several envelopes, perhaps a dozen in all. They were yellowing with age. Nancy took in a sharp breath when she saw they were all addressed to her: Miss Nancy Drayton, c/o Santo Tomas Internment Camp, Manila. She also noticed that each of the letters had been opened, though clearly never posted.
Angel handed them to Nancy, then she got up from the chair. ‘I need to get back to the village. As I said, my bus goes to the port soon and I need to get my bag from the guesthouse.’
‘Of course.’ Nancy put the letters on the table and walked through the house to the front door with Angel to see her out. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘For coming all this way.’
‘It is nothing,’ Angel replied. ‘As I said, I made a promise to Larry, and I wouldn’t break that. Larry was good to me.’
Nancy watched Angel leave through the front gate, turn right and set off towards Lake Sebu village along the dusty road, her bag swinging on her shoulder. She didn’t look back
once.
As soon as the mysterious woman had disappeared round a bend in the road, Nancy returned to the veranda and picked up the letters gingerly. She examined every one of them, turning them over and over in her hands, almost afraid of what she would discover when she looked at their contents. The writing seemed familiar, but it was certainly not Larry’s…
Slowly truth began to dawn on her. A sick feeling rushed through her, the same feeling she’d had each time she’d thought she was being watched. It was Larry who’d opened these letters and had pored over their contents. Had it been him watching her too?
With trembling hands, she opened the first envelope, took out the letter, unfolded it and read the opening words. The years fell away.
Dearest Nancy, I fell in love with you the first time I saw you, and nothing that has happened since that moment has changed a thing.
Those words took her straight back to the war, to a time even before those letters were written, to when it had all started in December 1941. She closed her eyes, and it was as if the years had peeled away and she was that young, naïve girl once again, starting her career as a naval nurse. Before the war had intervened, swept away her world and taken away her innocence forever.
Book blurb:
A gripping, emotional drama of love and courage set in the Philippines during WW2.
1960: Nancy Drayton, an American nurse living on Lake Sebu, is visited by a stranger who hands her some faded letters, given to her by a dying man. Reading them transports Nancy back to the terror of the war years.
1941: When Nancy’s world is blown apart by the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor, she volunteers to travel to the Philippines to serve at the front. She soon finds herself working in a field hospital on the Bataan Peninsula in the thick of the fighting, experiencing the horrors of war first hand.
When tending to some wounded men, she meets Captain Robert Lambert, and they become close. But the Japanese are closing in on Bataan, and when the US surrenders, they are driven apart.
As Robert struggles to survive the horrors of the Bataan Death March and the brutality of captivity in a prison camp, Nancy too finds herself a captive, fighting for her life. Will they survive to find one another again or will the forces of war keep them apart?
If you enjoy compelling historical fiction, you’ll love this sweeping story of love and war. Perfect for fans of Kristen Hannah, Dinah Jeffries and Victoria Hislop.
What everyone is saying about Ann Bennett:
‘What an amazing read!!! I didn’t expect this to be a roller coaster of emotions, suspense, and mystery but it was everything!!… The characters were amazing, the story will keep you wanting more and more until the end.’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
‘So captivating, I was on edge while flipping through the pages as fast as I could… Truly heartwarming… Emotional, heartbreaking … I loved this… A must read… Amazing.’ Page Turners, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Purchase Link – https://mybook.to/lotushouse
Author Bio –
Ann Bennett is a British author of historical fiction. Her first book, Bamboo Heart: A Daughter’s Quest, was inspired by researching her father’s experience as a prisoner of war on the Thai-Burma Railway and by her own travels in South-East Asia. Since then, that initial inspiration has led her to write more books about the second world war in SE Asia. Bamboo Island: The Planter’s Wife, A Daughter’s Promise, Bamboo Road: The Homecoming, The Tea Planter’s Club, The Amulet and her latest release The Fortune Teller of Kathmandu are also about WWII in South East Asia. All seven make up the Echoes of Empire Collection.
Ann is also the author of The Lake Pavilion, The Lake Palace, both set in British India during the 1930s and WWII, and The Lake Pagoda and The Lake Villa, both set in French Indochina. The Runaway Sisters, bestselling The Orphan House, The Child Without a Home and The Forgotten Children are set
in Europe during the same era and are published by Bookouture.
Ann is married with three grown up sons and a granddaughter and lives in Surrey, UK. For more details please visit www.annbennettauthor.com
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