Dear Reader,

How do we find our voice? Tender Earth is the story of how one girl, her friends and her community come to find theirs.

Some of you may have heard of the Levenson family before, through my stories Artichoke Hearts and Jasmine Skies. I have been asked many times by readers to write another tale in what I suppose has now come to be a family of books. Stories have to come to the writer – they have to grow in you over time.

And at last this story came. In it the baby of my first novel, Artichoke Hearts, is now twelve years old and, as the youngest member of her family, it’s now time to find her voice . . . and discover what she’ll use it for.

With my own children, and when I meet readers at events, we often discuss how difficult it is to know how to respond and act to things that we witness in the news and experience every day in our own lives: words and actions that disturb, cause fear, make us angry, upset, anxious or disempowered. Sometimes it feels hard to decipher the difference between truths and lies.

Tender Earth is set on this earth that Laila and her family and friends are born into and are now tending. Their journeys, from birth to growing up, contain mysteries, dreams and hard realities, and the young people in my story have many questions that they’re searching to find answers for.

I hope that stepping into the shoes of these characters, as they walk the same tender earth as you, helps you to work out what paths you will walk, what banners to hold up and what words you might choose to write on them.

Love,

Sita x

P.S. I have to thank our neighbour Billie for helping us with the creature (to be revealed in Chapter One) that really did turn up in our kitchen – sometimes, as they say, the truth really can be stranger than fiction!