I hope you have enjoyed the fifth novel in The Cornish Midwives series. Sadly, I am not a midwife, a doctor or a vicar, but I have done my best to ensure that the medical and clerical details are as accurate as possible. I am very lucky that one of my close friends, Beverley Hills, is a brilliant midwife and, as always, she has been a source of support and advice in relation to the midwifery storylines. However, if you are one of the UK’s wonderful midwives or maternity care assistants providing such fantastic support for new and expectant mums, I hope you’ll forgive any details which draw on poetic licence to fit the plot.
The support for The Cornish Midwives novels remains beyond anything I could have hoped for. I can’t thank all the book bloggers and reviewers, and Rachel Gilbey, who organises the blog tours, enough for their help. To all the readers who choose to spend their time and money reading my books, and especially those who make the time to leave a review, it means more than you will ever know and I feel so privileged to be doing the job I love. An extra big thank you goes to Jan Dunham, Beverley Hopper and Debbie Blackman.
I want to thank the fabulous Katie Chapman for her support with the recent Facebook Live interview for book four, as well as Sandra Twyman (a fantastic real-life MCA) and the lovely Tegan from ‘Reading with Tegs’ (who is also a trainee midwife) for their wonderful quotes endorsing the Cornish Midwife series. Thank you too to Grace Power, who entered the recent baby name competition, and whose entry of Remi was selected as the name of Nadia’s daughter.
My thanks as always go to the team at Boldwood Books for their help, especially my amazing editor, Emily Ruston, for lending me her expertise to get this book into the best possible shape and set the scene for the next book in the series. Thanks too to my wonderful copy editor, Cari, and brilliant proofreader, Candida, for all their hard work. I’m really grateful to Nia, Claire, Laura, Megan and Jenna for all the work behind the scenes and especially for marketing the books so brilliantly, and to Amanda for having the vision to set up such a wonderful publisher to work with.
A big thank you also goes to my very good friend Jennie Dunn for sharing the story of her faith journey with me and for describing what it felt like to go through a crisis of faith as Noah does. Not to mention the feedback she so kindly gave me when she read through the finished version of the story, for which I’m truly grateful.
As the opening dedication says, this book focuses a lot on the relationship between grandchildren and their grandparents, so I had to dedicate it to my mother and mother-in-law, Pauline and Christine, who have been wonderful grandmothers to my children. I couldn’t leave the dedication at that because I have now been blessed with my first grandchild, Arthur, and it’s definitely a love like no other. I just want to be with him all the time!
As ever, I can’t sign off without thanking my writing tribe, The Write Romantics, and all the other authors who I am lucky enough to call friends.
Finally, as it always will, my biggest thank you goes to my family – Lloyd, Anna and Harry – for their support, patience, love and belief throughout the journey that got me here.