Annie Stanley, All At Sea by Sue Teddern, an experienced scriptwriter for TV and radio, is her first novel.
Annie Stanley, currently unemployed and unlucky in love, feels she is going nowhere fast.
Then, her much-loved father is taken from her, dying unexpectedly.
When the stepmother, that she dislikes, decides to scatter his ashes in a place that meant nothing to him, Annie steals the urn that holds them and takes off!
Thinking of her father and his love of the shipping forecast that he used to listen to on the radio every day, Annie vows to take the urn with her on a tour of the thirty-one sea areas that are covered by the forecast. A journey that, sadly, her father never took, living as he did in St Albans, which is over 45miles, as the crow flies, from the nearest beach.
To find the ideal place to leave him and say goodbye, she travels from Cromarty through Dover and Plymouth to Fair Isle in hire cars, buses, trains, and a cruise ship called the “Black Watch”.
Annie meets many amazing characters, who broaden her outlook, and finds friends from the past, who lift her spirits and brighten her outlook on life.
As she attempts to fix family relationships, she also looks back on mistakes she has made in the past. Could she be given a second chance or is it already too late?
This talented writer has created so many wonderful and disparate characters in this, her first novel, that it is difficult to pick a favourite.
There is the elderly, rather scary, Hilary, Annie’s ex’s Godmother, who turns out to have an irreverent sense of humour.
The kind woman who gave Annie a ball of wool plus a circular knitting needle, and the lady on the train who taught her to knit corner to corner blanket squares.
Not forgetting Cromarty the cat!
And, so many, many more.
A definite must-read for 2021!
ISBN: 9781529025040
Annie Stanley, All At Sea is available in paperback, hardback and e-book.
About Sue Teddern
Sue Teddern has been a window dresser, a secretary, a feature writer and a university lecturer. She has over twenty years’ scriptwriting experience from episodes of Birds of a Feather for TV and Cooking in a Bedsitter for radio. Annie Stanley, All At Sea is her first novel. She is married and lives in Hove.
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