In the late 1930s, at the age of just 16, Julia Hayes knows she wants nothing more than to work on the family’s small hilltop farm in Yorkshire: her idea of heaven.

Although fully aware of the struggle farming had been to her parents, with her father Ernest already older than his years and her mother Margery subject to heart trouble, she will not be deterred, and with her brother Nick has ideas for making Hayes’ Farm an efficient and profitable business.

However the daunting threat of losing everything due to rent arrears, kept secret by Julia’s father, results in an old flame of her mother’s helping out, and Nick being lured away from farming by business opportunities and romance.

As one crisis leads to another Julia is left to struggle on her own: determined to hold on to Hayes’ Farm despite all the anguish and stress. With the outbreak of war her problems escalate, and she is left with heartache following a brief romantic encounter. But Julia becomes bound into that moment of romance and the outcome is beyond anything she could possibly have imagined.

Compelling to the end, this is the story of a woman’s indomitable ability to overcome all life’s conflicts for the promise of her own piece of heaven on earth.

Geoff Mallinson

Born in Halifax, Yorkshire, Geoff Mallinson’s first work was with his family’s wire goods manufacturer’s business. His war service was spent in the Royal Navy, and he later left the family business for farming.

Married, with a daughter and son, he moved to Devon to run an antique and piano shop with his wife and daughter.

It was at this time that his first two books of short stories were published.

He now lives in the Poitou-Charentes region of France, where he combines his writing with a fairly self-sufficient way of life.