Paperback: The Prior's Ford Books is set in Dumfries and Galloway, the southernmost county in Scotland, an area of some of the most beautiful countryside to be found in the UK. It is rich in wildlife and its hills and valleys are scattered with farmland, attractive villages and towns of architectural beauty as well as abbeys, castles and great houses and gardens bearing witness to its long history. It is a land of lochs, streams and rivers, and its southernmost border is the wild and magnificent Solway Firth. Dumfries and Galloway, in short, has everything. What better place to set a book?
There is consternation among the villagers of pretty Scottish Borders town Prior's Ford when a firm expresses interest in reopening an old granite quarry. Almost overnight, neighbours and friends fall out, with some welcoming the work the quarry will bring while others are ready to fight to preserve the village's peace.
Publican Glen Mason organises a protest group but when a local newspaper takes an interest in him and the story, he starts to feel very nervous indeed. And when Jenny Forsyth attends a protest meeting, she is shocked to discover the quarry surveyor is an unwelcome face from her past.
Clarissa Ramsay, newly widowed, is too preoccupied to care much about the threat facing the village. She has discovered her husband Keith had a secret life and has resolved to make some radical changes to her own.
While up at Linn Hall, the impoverished Ralston-Kerrs, struggling to keep the estate that is their ancestral heritage from going under, find that the changes threatened by the quarry represent a test of loyalty to the village that regards them as its lairds.
Secrets in Prior's Ford (2008) is the first book in the intriguing and scandalous Prior's Ford series. There are seven books in the series.
About the author: A former journalist, Evelyn Hood is best known for family sagas mainly set in her home town of Paisley (Renfrewshire) and on the Clyde Coast, although she is also the author of 'Forward by Degrees', a history of the University of Paisley. The history was commissioned to mark the University's centenary as a place of further education and was published in April 1997.
Evelyn has also published six one-act stage plays, a Scottish pantomime, a children's musical and a number of short stories and articles. Unpublished but performed stage work includes a full length play, three pantomimes, six children's musicals, and a large number of monologues and sketches.
Her hobbies include reading and amateur drama, and she lives in West Kilbride, Ayrshire with her husband. They have two grown sons.
Eve Houston is Evelyn's pseudonym.
Rating: 5/5
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