Girl on a Swing

Jill Stephens

£9.99

Penny, a moderately successful actress on stage and screen, returns to her home town to sell her parents' home after they died from a mystery virus. She is having the last swing from an apple tree in the garden when the branch breaks and she falls at the feet of Rory, the local GP, an old school friend (think a young James Herriot with people, not animals).
They have a wedding to which they invite everyone who knows them, and they try to help everyone they meet.
Penny meets up with friends old and new and together they make plans to counteract rural isolation and loneliness which form an important strand in the GP practice. Another strand is PTSD, suffered by former servicemen, and the problems for dementia sufferers and their carers.
Despite these serious themes, this is a feel-good story, written with humour.

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Vanguard press Publication date: 30/05/2024 | ISBN:9781800167360 | Pages: 264

ABOUT JILL STEPHENS

Jill started writing after she retired. Her career included working in the Civil Service in both London and Hampshire and teaching in secondary schools. She started writing and illustrating short stories to keep her mind active while she was a carer for her very elderly mother and she was an active member of both the art club and a writer's group in her home town. Her first self- published work in 1995 was Tales of the Malmesbury Merrie Monks and she also read some stories on local radio before she became more fully involved in caring for her mother. She continued to write and to illustrate stories, novels and children's books, but these were unpublished.
In 2019, after the death of her Naval officer husband, she vanity-published an autobiography entitled Cruel Mistress, (and no, she was not the Mistress.)
She moved back to Hampshire in 2021 to be closer to her children and to live by the sea.