It seemed no-one really knew the extent of her loss. I cried a lot with Julia and wanted to hug her. How some things would end, but I was so caught up in Julia’s emotions, that During her war efforts, I felt herĭesperation, her anxiety, and her frustration. She had a calling and did not shy from it It was fun to experience herįirst crush, to feel the butterflies with the first kiss and to realize theĭepth of her love for Geoffrey. Times I was able to laugh along with her. Julia is aįascinating character who experienced some extremely tragic events and This book moved me in a way that doesn’t happen too often. I actually stayed up all night finishing it. I was introducedįirst to story #1 – Sarah – through a book club. This book is #3 out of 4 stories of each Purcell sister. She lives with her husband in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England. The author enjoys gardening ('very good for working out writing problems in one's mind') music, particularly opera traveling and, of course, reading. While researching the background for JULIA'S STORY, she came across a collection of family letters in the Imperial War Museum in London, which resulted in her only nonfiction book, BILLIE: THE NEVILL LETTERS 1914-16. Before starting on the Quantocks series she wrote short stories for the British Broadcasting Corporation and for magazines. Ruth Elwin Harris won writing competitions as a schoolgirl, and also dramatized a children's novel for a school production. ' When I was writing SARAH'S STORY, the first in the series, I became very indignant about the way Frances was behaving, yet when I came to write about the same incidents in FRANCES'S STORY Frances's behavior seemed to me absolutely logical and right.' 'It was strange how partisan I became,' the author says. Each book has a different sister as heroine, and the story is told from that sister's point of view. Years later, when Ruth Elwin Harris sat down to tell the story of the orphaned Purcell sisters, she remembered those letters and their different viewpoints and incorporated the idea into her writing. Friends and family wrote often, and I was amazed at how accounts of the same incidents and people were often so different.'

Letter writing was the way we kept in touch. 'There was no such thing as e-mail then,' the author says, 'and the telephone was rarely used - it was expensive and calls had to be booked. His house and garden became the model for Hillcrest, the Purcell sisters' family home in the four-part series.Īnother influence came later, when Ruth Elwin Harris emigrated to Canada at the age of twenty-one. To escape the wartime bombing, she and her brother were sent to live with their grandfather in rural Somerset, England. Ruth Elwin Harris says that her historic quartet of novels, THE SISTERS OF THE QUANTOCK HILLS, had its beginnings while she was growing up during World War II.

Julia's Story by Ruth Elwin Harris