I have a wee treat for any WW2 fiction fans. It is great to see that Paula Greenlees’ latest is now available in eBook format. The paperback is due for release in December and is now up for pre-order.
The Forgotten Promise, set in Malaya, looks to be a real corker! Here’s some more detail to whet your appetite!
The Forgotten Promise
Malaya, 1920: Two girls make a promise in the shadows of the jungle. A promise that life won’t let them easily keep.
Malaya, 1941: Ella is running her late father’s tin mine in the Kledang hills, while Noor works as her cook. When the war that felt so far away suddenly arrives on their doorstep, Ella is torn apart from her family. Her daughter Grace is left in Noor’s care as Japanese soldiers seize the mine.
Ella is forced to make an impossible choice that takes her to England, thousands of miles from home. She is desperate to be reunited with her loved ones. But will the life she returns to be anything like the life she left behind?
Buy Link: https://t.co/QWsHZMxGAC
Paula Greenlees
Paula has lived in various places, including Singapore, where she was based for three years. It was while living in Singapore that the first seeds of her debut novel, Journey to Paradise developed. The crumbling buildings and the modern high-rises popping up almost overnight seemed to be a metaphor for the social diversity and change in Singapore at that time. However, as a young mother living there, she wondered what it must have been like as a post-war colonial wife living miles away from the familiarity of home. Despite the gloss and glamour of colonial living, women were frequently stuck in unhappy marriages, often unable to follow careers or have the independence to divorce if things went wrong – which they inevitably did.
Her writing, although set against exotic backgrounds, is set on the cusp of change – the shift from colonial dominance to independence. She likes to dig into a variety of issues, and her main protagonist is, in many ways, a metaphor for the events surrounding her at that time. It isn’t always an easy journey, but in the end, success comes her way.
As for Paula – she has always wanted to be a writer. As a little girl she used to spend hours writing stories and turning them into books, even using flour and water as paste to stick the pages together. She spent hours writing poetry and plays as a teenager and has always written short stories in her spare time. It is this need to write and a love of reading that led her to take a degree in English and European Thought and Literature, and later a Masters Degree in Creative Writing.
As a writer, she feels it is important to have a wide range of interests – not only does it add flavour and layering to prose, but it allows time for ideas to mull and to percolate. People watching in cafés is one, long walks is another. And food! Good food is essential to her and she loves to cook using the best ingredients she can find. As well as a love of travel, she enjoys photography, hill walking, and just generally being curious about life!
She has a grownup daughter and lives in Warwickshire with her husband and an extremely friendly Labrador.
If you’d like to know more about Paula and her work, please check out her links below:
Pam Lecky Books 
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