Memoring

Memoring is the prequel to Amie's Rest, set just a few years before Amie
finds herself in Scotland.

Seventeen year old Amie is living in St. Catherine's Assessment Centre in
Bristol.  It's meant to be a place of safety , but it's a house full of
young people's misery and anger.  She's  desperate to be back  in Somerset,
walking the fields and footpaths near her home.  She can't remember why
she's living in St. Catherine's and has lost her sense of who she is.  Only
through' memoring' can she escape the fear and anxiety that dominate her
days and reach an understanding of the events that brought her here.  The
novel shifts between  St. Catherine's where Amie gradually learns to present
the façade of an 'ordinary' girl and her memories of  the Somerset
countryside and her dysfunctional family life,  exploring themes of
alienation and belonging.  Can well intentioned professional care end badly?
Can some love be inappropriate?

Memoring traces the causes of Amie's anxiety and behavioural challenges,
gradually revealing the long arm of early childhood trauma.  In Amie's Rest
the power of the Scottish countryside helps to heal Amie's damaged psyche
,in Memoring it's the watery levels and moorland hills of Somerset that
bring joy to a troubled childhood.