Band of Gold
by Maggie Christensen
1- How did you come up
with the idea for "Band of Gold"?
Several years ago I heard of a woman whose husband placed his
wedding ring on the kitchen table on Christmas morning. It stuck in my mind and
eventually became the basis for this novel.The novel follows Anna through the months after her husband leaves her. It’s the story of a woman in her middle years, who is suddenly alone. It’s about how she copes with that, alongside her daughter’s joy in her first love and her parents’ failing health. When the opportunity for a second chance at love comes her way, she struggles to leave the past behind and create a new life for herself. Can she trust again? Does she dare?
2 - Tell us a bit about your current
project.
I’m currently working on a book called The Dreamcatcher .It’s
part of my Oregon Coast series, the first of which, The Sand Dollar, will be
released later this year. The Dreamcatcher is Ellen’s story. Ellen is a minor
character in The Sand Dollar, a Native American who owns a bookshop in
Florence, Oregon.
Ellen has the gift of being able to foretell the
future, but is at a loss to explain her nightmares and the uncanny premonition
she experiences one morning when a dark cloud obscures the sun and she shivers
with a sense of foreboding.
When her brother’s old army friend, Travis, insists
she help him take her brother to hospital, she dismisses him as another of her
brother’s no-hoper buddies, but can’t shake the idea there’s a connection
between her nightmares and Travis’ sudden appearance in her life.
3 - From one immigrant to another
... any regrets?
Absolutely not! I came to Australia in my mid-twenties
attracted by advertisements to ‘Come Teach in the Sun’ which depicted muscular
young men wearing swimmers, gowns and mortar boards standing on beaches.
Needless to say, the school I was sent to was nothing like the posters. I came
for two years and stayed to build a career in education, teaching in schools
and colleges. I met my wonderful husband here when we both teaching education
at Wagga Wagga. I came to Australia to exchange the dark, dank winter (and
often summer) days of Scotland with Australian sunshine. Beautiful though the
land of my birth is, I really hated the weather and wanted the adventure of
travel. Having grown up with romantic tales of a great aunt who married an
Australian soldier during the First World War, Australia was my first choice.
Now I live on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast in almost perpetual sunshine. Winter
here is very like the summers I remember in Scotland. What is there to regret?
Blurb:
Author:
Born
and brought up in Scotland, and attracted by advertisements to ‘Come and Teach
in the Sun’, Maggie Christensen emigrated to Australia in her twenties to teach
in primary schools in Sydney. She now lives with her husband of almost thirty
years near Peregian Beach on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland. She loves
walking on the deserted beach in the early mornings and having coffee by the
Noosa River on weekends. After spending many years in teaching, lecturing and
education management, where she wrote course materials and reports, Maggie
began writing the sort of books she enjoys reading, books about women in their
prime, their issues and relationships. Now her days are spent surrounded by
books, either reading or writing them – her idea of heaven! She continues her
love of books as a volunteer with Friends of Noosaville Library where she helps
organise author talks and selects and delivers books to the housebound.
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