Setting is important to me. If I’m to spend several months mentally in a place it has to be compelling and somewhere I want to immerse myself. I also need to be very familiar with an area and its people to get the nuances of a setting right – architecture, cultural mix, cuisine, the ebb and flow of the town and land over the day.
Like the setting of my last book, Poppy Jenkins, the story of The Goodmans takes place somewhere from my childhood.
I adore the old market towns of the Welsh borders – Shrewsbury, Ludlow, Ledbury – with their medieval twisted timber buildings and Georgian grandeur. None were quite perfect for the setting of The Goodmans, and I blended several together to make the fictional Ludbury of the family’s residence. It most closely resembles Ludlow, however, the main difference being the church and its grounds in the book in place of the castle next to the market square.
Here are a few locations in a characterful town for a characterful family: