September Book Club with Sylvia Kent and guest writer, Beryl Brown.
INTERVIEW SYLVIA KENT (INCLUDING 60 SECONDS OF BRENTWOOD HISTORY) & GUEST WRITER, BERYL BROWN
Beryl Brown was brought up in Witham on the family nursery started by her parents after they moved from Brentwood in the 1950s.
May’s Boys, is set in a fictional Dorset village in 1944/45. The book started life as a short-story assignment for a BA course. When Beryl went on to take a Master’s degree with Manchester Metropolitan University in 2017, she developed the story into a novel.
The book, inspired by Beryl’s mother’s stories of evacuation in World War Two, tells the story of a young widow and the evacuee she fosters throughout the war. She must fight local prejudice, against incomers and working women, in her attempt to adopt the boy and protect him from being sent back to the city, and the neglectful mother who hadn’t contacted him for four years.
Having been let down by an interested publisher, Beryl decided to publish the book under her own publishing imprint, Three Bees Publishing, and produce the book herself. It was launched on Leap Year Day 2020.
Large-print rights were subsequently sold to Ulverscroft publishers and the large-print edition of May’s Boys is stocked by libraries all over the country.
Beryl is currently working on a sequel to the novel, set fifteen months later in 1947.
Beryl and her husband now live in a small cottage just outside Manningtree with their large, exuberant Dalmatian, Digby.
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May’s Boys (in standard paperback size) is available from the usual online outlets, can be ordered by bookshops or ordered direct from Beryl’s website berylpbrown.uk.
The e-book edition is available from all e-book retailers.l
ABOUT SYLVIA
Sylvia Kent is the writer of 13 books, history being her favourite subject, her current book BRENTWOOD IN 50 BUILDINGS is now in bookshops. She has her hugely successful blog at https://sylviakent.blogspot.com/ She is part of the Billericay readers group, brentwood writers circle and of course The Society of woman writers and journalists. She is a supporter and promoter of many unpublished writers helping them on the path to reach their readership.
