This week I welcome Linda Huber to my blog to chat about two favourite fictional people.
Linda grew up in Glasgow, but went to work in Switzerland for a year, aged 22, and has lived there ever since. Her day jobs have included working as a physiotherapist in hospitals and schools for handicapped children, and teaching English in a medieval castle. After spending chunks of the current decade moving house, she has settled in a lovely flat on the banks of Lake Constance, where she writes psychological suspense novels as Linda Huber, and feel-good novellas under her pen name Melinda Huber.
Stolen Sister is her eighth book. The final novella in her 'in Switzerland' series, Wedding Bells in Switzerland, was published last week.
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First of all, big thanks to Susanna for asking me to come on her blog. ‘Take Two Characters’ is such an original idea for a blog series!
I thought for quite a long time before deciding which of my own characters I’d write about, and eventually chose Vicky from my newest book Stolen Sister. Like me, Vicky grew up in Glasgow with a short stay in Edinburgh. The similarity between us ends there, though, for she has a lot more to cope with than I ever did as a child.
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For nearly four years, Vicky lives in in a happy family unit on the south side of Glasgow. Little brother Jamie, who has severe cerebral palsy, is two years younger, then baby sister Erin is born. Not long afterwards, Vicky and Jamie go for a weekend to Great-Aunt Maisie in Edinburgh while Mum and Dad take Erin to a class reunion in Cumbria. And that’s where family life stops for Vicky. Her parents die in a fire at the hotel; Erin survives, but disappears. Maisie can’t cope with the other two children for long, so Vicky and Jamie grow up in foster care, with no memory of their little sister, because for reasons of her own, Maisie allows them to forget Erin. |
Fast forward twenty-two years, and Vicky is called to Maisie’s nursing home to say a final goodbye. ‘Find Erin,’ is Maisie’s last wish, but she can’t give Vicky any more information other than the fact that a little sister once existed. Vicky’s search begins…
Years ago, I did some research on my family tree, and I was gobsmacked by what emerged - I have a distant little cousin who drowned on school trip to a public swimming pool in the 1940s. I’d never heard of her before I started researching. Then there’s my paternal grandparents, who were married in Bombay. Why? Nobody knows, and there’s nobody left to ask. And around that time, my mother showed me a photo of my other grandmother’s neighbour, who went to America on the Titanic, and no, I have no idea, not even a name, and the photo is lost.
Even nowadays, it’s not impossible for a baby to disappear, like Erin did, and grow up unaware of their roots. And for Vicky, with no family left apart from her profoundly handicapped brother, finding her sister comes to mean finding herself, her family, her identity. Family, even when we’ve never met them, are part of who we are. And Vicky does find hers, although ‘Erin’, in one way, no longer exists.
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For my other character I turned to Mary Higgins Clark – I love her books. She writes about strong women, and although there’s often a man around somewhere in the background, it’s the women who carry the story and propel the action forwards. The character I’ve chosen is Jenny in A Cry in the Night. She’s head of a one-parent family in New York, where she has a demanding and poorly-paid job which means her two small girls spend their days with a childminder. |
Jenny doesn’t have two pennies to rub together – and then she meets Mr Perfect, Erich Krueger, rich, appealing, and hopelessly in love with her. Or that’s how it seems, anyway, and it isn’t until they’re married and living in a tiny community in the middle of nowhere that Jenny sees what is really going on. When Erich disappears with the little girls, Jenny too is left searching for her family, terrified her girls will come to harm.
In the end, both Jenny and Vicky succeed – although success wasn’t what either woman thought it was going to be…
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Linda's Links:
Website: https://lindahuber.net/
Twitter: LindaHuber19
Linda on Amazon
Melinda on Amazon |
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PS I also enjoyed the glimpse into Linda Hber's family history. All those mysteries! Fascinating.