THE SCOTTISH FELLOWSHIP OF CHRISTIAN WRITERS

It is 1954 and the women of a Scottish mining community are poised to take it forward into the second half of the twentieth century with or without help from their men. We follow a year in the life of three couples:

Kate is mourning the loss of her two grown-up children who have emigrated to Canada. She longs to join them. Johnnie is a rising star in the mining industry, full of his own ambitions and blind to Kate’s misery. His crotchety old mother is no longer able to live alone and he takes it for granted that Kate will take on the work of caring for her.

Aggie, Kate’s older sister, has taken over the running of a small bakery, despite scorn and predictions of failure from Eck, a zealous union official who hates Johnnie for “betraying the men” and moving into management. Eck is plagued by impotence and depression, Aggie is sharp-tongued and rebellious; their marriage is a battlefield of abuse and deceit. But she is a beautiful singer and, when the opportunity arises for her to sing solo on a big stage, she seizes it - without Eck’s knowledge.

Aggie discovers that Kate is also deceiving her husband with secret weekly excursions. Where can she be going? Curiosity and jealousy of her younger, prettier sister lead her to seek the help of 

Jeannie, the village gossip, sharp, intelligent and energetic. She agrees to take on the investigation, to the bemusement of her big, slow-witted husband, Bob, who is Eck’s workmate down the mine and the recipient of his confidences. 

This novel will have you laughing out loud and occasionally wiping away a tear. There are dark themes of loss, exploitation and abuse but also bright themes of love, friendship and fulfilment.

As the women struggle with the strangleholds of tradition and religion, it seems as if only a miracle can help. But when the clock strikes twelve on Hogmanay, everyone is in for a surprise!

A TIME TO TRAVEL is set in Scotland in two time zones:  early twenty-first century and early nineteen hundreds.

It follows the lives of three main characters

• Mary, an investment banker in Edinburgh, is a seasoned time-traveller. As she connects with two of her ancestors,  she finds her own life begins to mirror theirs. She also unwillingly reconnects with a past loss and its unresolved grief.

• Violet, a widow living in Glasgow, is involved in the fiery suffragette activities of the Scottish branch of the Women's Social and Political Union. To her horror, she finds that a key member of the Board is a male lawyer who has tried to browbeat her over her inheritance. Support and love from an old friend enable her to persevere.

• Rose, aged fifteen, meets and falls in love with a 'soldier laddie' who is on the brink of going to fight in WW1. He dies in a famous train crash before he even gets there, and Rose discovers she is pregnant. She seeks a terrifying illegal abortion. Her mother, a Roman Catholic, is furious. Her attempts to make Rose show repentance bring their previously strong relationship to the brink of collapse.

Can Mary use her own past trauma to help them reconcile?

The three women’s stories interweave as Mary fights a scheming fellow worker who is trying to discredit her, starts a new romance, and finds that her new love is also a time traveller. Together, they experiment with the parameters of time travel. 

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