England is recognisable on the surface: the buildings are the same, there is still a government, the tube still runs through London. For Lina, however, the England she knew when she was little, when her mum was still around, has disappeared completely.
Arriving home one day to find her mum gone, Lina finds in her place a leather-bound notebook containing hundreds of pages of her mum’s handwriting: letters of advice and memories; all the things her mother would no longer have the chance to teach her. Through these pages, Lina learns that her mother, Eve, left in the middle of the night to avoid being arrested. The Government crackdown on immigrants meant that Eve either had to flee or risk the same fate as her friends; friends who were taken away from their homes and families, but never made it back to their country of birth.
Taking Eve’s advice, Lina leaves her life behind, and sets off on a journey north to Scotland to find freedom and, she hopes, her mother.
Dear Lina is my debut novel, available exclusively on Audible. It was published on December 3rd 2020. Click here to order it.
Beautifully narrated by Amelie Roch and Dervla Kirwan.