Unleaving

Disgrifiad Cymraeg / Welsh Description

Daw Margaret Lewis o Ddyffryn Tywi, ond mae'n rhaid i'w theulu symud i Dde Affrica ar gyfer dechrau newydd. Yn dilyn marwolaeth ei thad, mae Margaret a'i ffrind yn rhedeg yr hen fferm, ond yn fuan maent yn cael eu dal yn y we o gyfrinachau a chelwyddau sy'n perthyn i'r tŷ. Ailargraffiad. Cyhoeddwyd yn gyntaf yn 2019.

Disgrifiad Saesneg / English Description

Forced to leave her family home in the Towy Valley, 17 year old Margaret Lewis travels with her parents to take up a new life in South Africa. After her father's death, Margaret and her friend run the dilapidated farm, but soon fall into the web of secrets and deception surrounding the property. Reprint. First Published in 2019.

Dosbarthu

Byddwn yn dosbarthu eitemau sydd mewn stoc o fewn 3 diwrnod gwaith, fel arfer drwy Royal Mail Tracked 48. Ar gyfer archebion o flaen llaw, byddwn yn dosbarthu’r eitem o fewn 3 diwrnod gwaith ar ôl ei derbyn gan ein cyflenwr.

Dispatch

In-stock items will be dispatched within 3 business days, usually by Royal Mail Tracked 48. For pre-orders, we’ll dispatch within 3 business days of receiving the item from our supplier.

Adolygiad y Cyhoeddwr / Publisher Review

Set in the 1920s, in Carmarthenshire and South Africa, Siân Collins’s compelling debut novel tells the story of young Margaret Lewis, the surviving child and heir of Colonel Lewis and his wife, Fay. Margaret’s older brother David, an officer in the Welsh Guards, has died at the age of just nineteen in the First World War, and her parents are still overwhelmed by grief. They are also struggling to maintain their small country estate of Bryntowy. So, when the bank finally forecloses, Colonel Lewis decides to sell the estate and move to South Africa, to a farm inherited from a distant relative. He has spent time in South Africa in the past, and sees a bright new future for them there. Before they leave, they are visited by Percival Flynn, a distant cousin of the colonel’s who is a lawyer in Natal Province, who reveals that, under the late Ernest Bancroft’s will, the farm has been left not to the colonel, but to his heir – Margaret. Margaret sees Flynn pass a note surreptitiously to her father and, when it flutters accidentally and unnoticed from the colonel’s pocket, she retrieves it: ‘Codicil destroyed as agreed. She must not know.’ With the first mystery set in place, the reader follows the small family on the long voyage across the ocean to Durban, where they are met by none other than Percival Flynn. He clearly has designs on Margaret, who instinctively distrusts him and seeks to avoid his attentions. She also overhears a whispered conversation, something about her being Flynn’s ‘golden egg’, which intensifies her suspicions. Her mother, however, is taken in and relies increasingly on Flynn’s support and guidance as her husband’s health deteriorates dramatically soon after their arrival in Durban. And when the colonel dies, mother and daughter find themselves dependent on a stranger in a strange land – a land whose rules, laid down by white colonialists, they refuse to obey. Unleaving is a novel packed tight with intrigue and mysteries. What was in the codicil that Flynn destroyed? What is the true nature of the relationship between Flynn and his so-called friend, Mary? Who was Josephine, the woman whose name is also carved on Ernest Bancroft’s tombstone? And who is ‘ZGM’, the person who leaves paintings, sketches and notes for Margaret at Thorneybrook, the farm she has inherited? Slowly at first, but with increasing momentum and intensity, the reader is drawn in to personal histories that also tell the story of a South Africa deeply damaged by aggressive colonisation and hurtling towards apartheid.