A Good Liar (Between the Mountains and the Sea)

Jessie Thompson had been lying to her mother all her life’…and the lies continue as Jessie gives away her baby in the chaos of Barrow during the Great War, changes her name and escapes to the glorious landscape of west Cumberland where the River Esk winds into the Irish Sea. Driven by loneliness, and despite her better judgment, Jessie embarks on a love affair that threatens her security, while a ghost from her past moves ever closer.

Set in what is now the Lake District National Park, Ruth Sutton’s first novel introduces us to a fascinating cast of characters, in the first half of the last century, when oil lamps lit the houses and horses ploughed the fields. Life was different then, but the passions and risks that shape our lives were just as real.

This is the first part of a trilogy ‘Between the Mountains and the Sea’ tracing Jessie’s life through the dramatic decades from the Great War through the thirties into the Second War and on into the gloom of post-war England and the dawn of the nuclear age in Cumberland. (2012-04-16)