She, You, I
Sally Keeble
Publication date: January 11th 2023
Genres: Adult, Contemporary

An emotional page-turner of a story about a family torn apart by the legacy of war that asks the question: what happens to the hurt we can’t forget?
When Skye Stanhope returns to her grandmother’s childhood home, she’s searching for the roots of her life story. Why her tough-minded granny ran away to war. And why her brilliant mother died.

Behind the women’s successes, lies deep trauma. As Skye strips away the layers of secrecy, she confronts their inner torments: forces that bound the women together, but also tore them apart. It’s a journey from a poverty-stricken tenement block to an airbase in wartime Suffolk, through boom-time London to a coffee cart beside the sea.

Woven into the women’s lives is Tseng Hsiao Ling, a feisty, enigmatic seamstress whose fortunes become inextricably linked with theirs.

It’s a sweeping tale of love, war and family secrets over three generations.

Through each woman’s story, “She, You, I” holds up a mirror to the complexity of family relationships: mothers, sisters, daughters, and the unexpected twists in Skye’s search for closure.

Goodreads / Amazon

EXCERPT

“You”

Julia tells her sister Isla’s story

The Lonely Hearts Club Band played on through that summer while I took you toddling around the garden. It was your talking that finally hooked me. Your eyes didn’t change colour like mine had done, and you would fix me with their baby blueness, and hold out a daisy or a rose petal you’d picked up off the lawn and make babbly noises and then you’d scream with frustration when I couldn’t understand. Until one day when you were babbling away you suddenly came out with “Ju, Ju.” It made me stop. You were so pleased with yourself, you said it again. “Ju-ju.”

Unconditional love is cataclysmic, so I discovered that day. When you held me with your baby blue eyes and said my name, it triggered something deep inside me. Perhaps it’s what a mother feels when she holds her baby for the first time. Perhaps it’s what Mother felt for me once. Or maybe it’s what a lover feels, someone who’s going to follow you to the end of the earth. Like Omar Sharif trudging through the snowstorm in Dr Zhivago to find his beloved Lara. Perhaps someone might feel like that about me one day. But meanwhile I knew for certain I didn’t want to leave home. My love for you was unconditional, and whatever life threw at you, I wanted to be there to help you catch it.

“Ju-ju.”

Everything about that moment stuck.

Author Bio:

Sally writes novels about the things she’s passionate about—the triumphs and tragedies of people’s lives, their families and life stories.

It’s what originally took her into journalism and then politics, in the UK and beyond. She spent her early years in the USA, Switzerland and Australia, returning to the UK after working as a journalist in South Africa. After serving as an MP, she worked in international development and travelled widely, especially in Africa and South Asia.

“She, You, I” is her first novel. She’s written nonfiction previously. Sally splits her time between Northampton and Bawdsey, a village in coastal Suffolk.

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