Journey's End

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Journey's End

The third book of Jacqueline James' Barwell Trilogy

With support we can break free. It takes courage to break the ties we bind ourselves with.

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Books by Jacqueline James

Rude Awakening and Let's Escape are the first and second books in Jacqueline James' Barwell Trilogy.

Rude Awakening by Jacqueline James

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Rude Awakening

Jacqueline’s debut novel, Rude Awakening, is a thought-provoking and touching tale of loss, evolving friendship and self discovery.

Hilary’s mother dies suddenly and she is thrown into a spiral of despair. With support from her friends she lifts herself out of her despondency, and begins to come to terms with the loss, until the discovery of a manuscript amongst her mother’s things throws her into turmoil. How could she have lived with someone for so long and not had an inkling of their history?

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Let's Escape by Jacqueline James

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Let's Escape

Hilary, released from a life of bowing to her mother’s wishes, has come out of her shell. Emboldened, she renovates the bungalow that she and her mother had shared. In trying to escape the resulting chaos, she ventures on a trip that would have been unthinkable while her mother was alive. Surprising herself and delighting her friends, she finds love and the promise of happiness.

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Jacqueline James

I, like many others, have experienced the feeling of being trapped by circumstances, by the constant need to put others first, the difficulty of finding a means of escape, the impossibility of being able to live fully as yourself.

Writing has always been a form of release, a way of processing my feelings. I have kept all my travel journals but the words written to help me make sense of life, during my years as a full time general practitioner, have not survived. With the added challenge of caring for elderly parents, characters developed in my mind who allowed me to fictionalise my feelings, first in short stories and then novels. I had found my escape.

My books are ordinary stories about ordinary people. How we deal with the chaos left by everyday events in our own lives, relying on the kindness of others and our own resilience until order is restored; and how in that process we change and grow.

In the books, Hilary and her friends mirror facets of my own life experiences. Hilary’s story is unique, as is my own. Readers may not have lived the same lives as Hilary, her friends or even myself but the feelings are universal.

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Short stories, Flash fiction and other jottings

Talk at St Johns English Library, Menton

This is the transcript of the talk I gave at St Johns English Library, Menton on 20th January 2023....

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Hugi

Hugi

For most of my adult life I have had a dog. My last dog, Hugi appears as 'Hector' in Rude Awakening and the sequel Let’s Escape.

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Jacqueline James