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.

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