Book Extract & Giveaway: Bamboo Heart: A Daughter’s Quest by Ann Bennett

I’m pleased to be welcoming Ann Bennett to Novel Kicks and the book birthday blitz for her book, Bamboo Heart: A Daughter’s Quest.

From award-winning author Ann Bennett comes a captivating WW2 novel of love and survival – a daughter’s journey of discovery and a soldier’s strength in the bleakest of times.

When Laura Ellis, a successful city lawyer, arrives home to see her dying father Tom, a mysterious stranger is watching the house. This leads her to embark on a journey to discover their connection.

To do so, she has to retrace her father’s steps; to the Bridge on the River Kwai: where as a prisoner of war of the Japanese, Tom endured disease, torture and endless days of slavery; and to the beautiful island of Penang, to uncover his secrets from the 1930s.

For Tom made himself a promise: to return home. Not to the grey streets of London, where he once lived, but to Penang, where he found paradise and love.

As Laura searches for the truths Tom refused to tell her, in the places where he once suffered, lived and loved, she will finally find out the story behind his survival, and discover her own path to love and happiness..

This book has previously been published both as Bamboo Heart and as A Daughter’s Quest. It won the won the award for fiction published in Asia, Asian Books Blog, 2015 and was shortlisted for “Best Fiction Title” in the Singapore Book Awards 2016.

There is a chance to win a paperback copy of The Lotus House but first, Ann has shared an extract from Bamboo Heart: A Daughter’s Quest with us today. We hope you enjoy it. 

*****beginning of extract*****

Laura Ellis is an only child, her mother died with she was small. Now, her elderly father, Tom has collapsed with a heart attack. As she travels in the ambulance with him to hospital, she realises how little she knows about her father’s past life…

Laura balanced herself precariously on the pull-down seat of the ambulance. She clung with slippery hands to a metal bar, lurching from side to side as they raced through the dark streets. She could hear the wail of the siren. It sounded as if it came from a long way away.

She watched in anguish as the paramedics worked on her father.

Don’t leave me, Dad, she pleaded silently. For God’s sake don’t leave me.

The ambulance slowed down. She glanced out of the window. They were moving along a narrow residential street, manoeuvring between badly parked cars.

‘We’re getting near the hospital now,’ one of the men informed her, looking up. He had an Irish accent. His eyes were bloodshot and exhausted. He must see this all the time, Laura thought.

‘Try not to worry,’ he said. ‘We’ll be there soon.’

She swallowed.

‘Is he going to be alright?’

‘We’re taking good care of him. As soon as we arrive we’re going to take him straight into the trauma room. Someone will tell you where to wait. Try to keep calm.’

When the ambulance drew up under the hospital canopy, they opened the back doors, and bright lights from the entrance flooded in. Hospital staff surrounded the stretcher and carried it swiftly from the ambulance, placed it onto a trolley and wheeled it inside. Once through the doors, more people in white coats joined the convoy and rushed the trolley down a long corridor. Laura had to jog to keep up with them. Everything around her was a blur.

Suddenly the little crowd disappeared through a pair of swing doors marked ‘Intensive Care. Medical Staff Only’. She was alone in the dingy passage; it was not unlike the corridor in the police station, except this one smelled of disinfectant, the other of sweat and despair.

She sunk onto a plastic chair and put her face in her hands. Nobody had told her where or how long she would have to wait.

Unable to sit still, she got up and paced about. She strode to the end of the corridor and stared out of the window onto an empty car park lit by the harsh glare of floodlights. She didn’t want to go any further or turn the corner, in case someone came through the double doors with news. She turned round to see that the corridor was deserted. Would they forget she was there? She had an impulse to run back to the doors and push them open. How could they be taking so long? Why didn’t someone come and tell her what was going on?

She wondered what life would be like without her father. She shuddered. It was impossible to contemplate such a thing. He’d always seemed so healthy, making light of his constant cough and his bad leg.

The doors opened and a doctor came through. He was shorter than Laura. He had oriental looks and was probably Chinese. She walked towards him and he looked up at her and smiled briskly.

‘Your father is stable now. You can see him. He won’t want to talk much. Better not to tire him.’

‘Is he going to be OK?’ she faltered.

‘He has a very weak heart. It has been weakened … He may have suffered from malnutrition in the past.’

‘Malnutrition?’

‘Yes. Was he short of food when he was young? For a sustained period perhaps?’

‘He was a prisoner of war … Of the Japanese. I know that.’

‘I thought so. I have seen it before. There is even a name for the condition – bamboo heart. It means that the heart has been permanently weakened by starvation. He needs to be very careful.’

She swallowed and stared at him, trying to take in what he had just told her. Bamboo heart? It sounded incredible. Starvation? Dad had never even hinted at that.

How little she really knew about his life, of his time in Malaya before the war, the woman in the photograph, his time as a prisoner. She knew nothing of the horrors he might have suffered. How could I have taken you so much for granted all these years? And by the selfish act of a teenager, throwing the letter from Penang into the flames, she had probably denied him contact with someone he had once loved.

How can I ever make it up to you? How can I make up for being selfish and callous, of always putting myself first?

*****end of extract*****

About Ann Bennett –

Ann Bennett is a British author of historical fiction. Her first book, Bamboo Heart: A Daughter’s Quest, was inspired by researching her father’s experience as a prisoner of war on the Thai-Burma Railway and by her own journey to uncover his story. It won the Asian Books Blog prize for fiction published in Asia in 2015, and was shortlisted for the best fiction title in the Singapore Book Awards 2016.

That initial inspiration led her to write more books about WWII in Southeast Asia – Bamboo Island: The Planter’s Wife, A Daughter’s Promise, Bamboo Road: The Homecoming, The Tea Planter’s Club, The Amulet, and The Fortune Teller of Kathmandu. Along with The Lotus House, published in October 2024, they make up the Echoes of Empire Collection.

Ann is also the author of The Oriental Lake Collection – The Lake Pavilion and The Lake Palace, both set in British India during the 1930s and WWII, and The Lake Pagoda and The Lake Villa, set in French Indochina during the same period. A Rose in the Blitz – the first in the Sisters of War series and set in London during WWII, was published in March 2024.

The Lake Pagoda won a bronze medal for historical fiction in Asia in the Coffee Pot Book Club, Book of the Year awards 2022. The Fortune Teller of Kathmandu won a silver medal for dual-timeline historical fiction, and A Rose in the Blitz won bronze in the historical romance category in the Coffee Pot Book Club, Book of the Year awards 2024.

The Runaway Sisters, USA Today bestselling The Orphan House, The Child Without a Home and The Forgotten Children are set in Europe during the same era and are published by Bookouture. Her latest book, The Stolen Sisters, published on 29^th November 2024 is the follow-up to The Orphan List (published by Bookouture in August this year) and is set in Poland and Germany during WWII.

A former lawyer, Ann is married with three grown up sons and a granddaughter and lives in Surrey, UK. For more details, please visit 

Say hello to Ann via her website, Facebook, Twitter (X) and Instagram.  

Bamboo Heart: A Daughter’s Quest is part of the Echoes of Empire Collection. Click here to buy on Amazon and Waterstones. 

*****

Win a Paperback copy of The Lotus House by Ann Bennett (Open INT)

Would you like to win a copy of The Lotus House? Well, you’ve come to the right place.

Open worldwide, all you have to do to enter is click on this link.

*Terms and Conditions –

Worldwide entries welcome.  Please enter using the Rafflecopter link above. 

The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. 

Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data. 

 I (Novel Kicks) am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.

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Laura

I’m Laura. I started Novel Kicks in 2009. I wanted a place to post my writing as well as give other writers like me the opportunity to do the same. There is also a monthly book club, a writing room which features writing prompts, book reviews, competitions, author interviews and guest posts.

I grew up by the sea (my favourite place in the world) and I currently live in Hampshire. I am married to Chris, have a cat named Buddy and I would love to be a writer. I’m trying to write the novel I’ve talked so much about writing if only I could stop pressing delete. I’ve loved writing since creative writing classes in primary school. I have always wanted to see my teacher Miss Sayers again and thank her for the encouragement. When not trying to write the novel or writing snippets of stories on anything I can get my hands on, I love reading, dancing like a loon and singing to myself very badly. My current obsession is Once Upon a Time and I would be happy to live with magic in the enchanted forest surrounded by all those wonderful stories provided that world also included Harry Potter. I love reading chick lit. contemporary fiction and novels with mystery.