Meet Samantha- pre-teen; an average girl with an ordinary life. Samantha is not one of the in-crowd and her sanctuary is in books and her own vivid imagination. Through one book in particular, Sam embarks on a journey of discovery with an odd but cute little rat, called Kevin Kilcat, as a guide, who turns out to be the manifest spirit of a deceased brother Sam never knew existed. This spirit guide becomes the friend she always wanted.
Sam is a girl growing up with a spirit guide, Kevin the Rat. In A Rat's Tail, she and Kevin travelled in a separate reality, another life. But in Blood Brothers, her second sortie into the book of possibilities, she has not only skipped tracks but has also switched genders. Sucked into a life in North America in the 1800's she finds herself in a past life regression, when white pioneers traversed the domain of the red man, exciting, challenging and hauntingly familiar.
Sam is into paths and journeys. You’ll know this if you’ve read Books One and Two of The Circular Scrolls. By the start of Book Three she knows that she is going to put herself into places and situations, life frames, where she can come to understand, at the deepest possible level, the cyclical nature of LIFE. There are avenues waiting to be chosen; adventures waiting to be had; all hers for the taking. And in her room, facing an enormous photograph of wild lions, once again she is falling, falling, floating, round and round, like the feather loosed from the wing of a bird… … And … with Kevin, spirit guide and rat, travels back to Africa in the 1800s. There she meets a young boy, Mogo, and, together, with Hunter, an American disguised as an Arab, they cross the continent in search of Mogo’s sister, Noni, who has been stolen by slave traders. On the way they encounter warlords, cannibals and a herd of stampeding wildebeest, as they cross mountains and trek through jungle. It is a story about making it through, about purpose and intent, about pursuit and discovery of self, and hope.
Against a backdrop of her relationship with Steve, Sam explores LOVE in all its very different shapes and shades. Studying aspects of herself in parallel lives, catching glimpses of figures from the past and the future, she explores, as a wartime adventuress, as a widow of 30 something, as a slick temptress, as a prostitute at the turn of the century, as a wandering ghost and as a tormented high priestess 2,000 years BC and she looks at love ‘from all sides now’ and its shadow dance with itself and sometimes with the grim reaper. In her present reality in the no mans land between child and adult and with Steve's solid if sometimes reluctant support, she experiments with being a good friend, a soul mate, a lover, a whore, a wildchild, a musician and a writer. And with Kevin’s inimitable help and grounding humour she redefines her dreams and puts a tentative foot on the path towards the next stage of her journey.
Sam hits the road, literally and metaphorically in the fifth book of The Circular Scrolls,and with Steve, continues her explorations in Greece and the Greek Islands and finds herself entangled in a web of past lives whose strands reach out to her from the past and the future
Apparently alone again, Sam travels to northern India where in Ghandi's Gardens in Delhi she experiences a strange epiphany and then follows her heart to North America
Sam is on her own again. But her time travelling is not finished and she finds herself in 1860, in Northern India, in what was then the Northwest Frontier. Here she meets and falls in love with an officer in the British Raj, Vivian, finally marrying him.
Knowing she cannot stay with him here, she risks all, persuading him that the only way they can be together is for him to come forward in time…
Returning to her present time she elects to go back to India and travel the places that her lost lover had lived and known, in the hope of finding him again.
Hiring an Indian tour guide, a young man born in Lucknow and an historian, the two travel to all the places she knows of Vivian’s homeland, extensively through northern India, and get to know each other well. Kaamal confides in her, telling her he is gay and that the love of his life was sent to England 12 years earlier. The strength of the relationship eventually encourages Sam to contrive a reunion for Kaamal and his first love, Ata.
Sam, believing that her cause is lost makes one last trip to Delhi, at the suggestion of the two newly reunited lovers, to give the universe one last chance…
Sam and Vivian had gone to live with Kaamal and Ata. After that first phone call from a Delhi hotel telling Ata what had happened in Gandhi’s gardens, he had invoked the standing invitation and Vivian and Samanthar had flown to Chandigarh. After that it just fell into place. Sam sold everything she owned in America and never went back. Vivian had family money going back generations. Ata and Kaamal were living together in the north of Himachal Pradesh in a modest home of modest proportions. After some months together it was plain to all that they could share their living arrangements and their lives. So. they all decided on and contributed to the purchase of the large and comfortable house that resided on a hill overlooking the valley, and made it their home.
Samanthar named it The Dilkhusha Khoti…The Palace of Heart’s Desire… And there they stayed.
Sam wrote and researched history and legend with Kaamal. Kaamal taught in three local schools and discussed history and writing and the vagaries of the educational system with Sam. Vivian explored the history of the state, travelling to its furthest remote corners and debated anthropology and entomology with Ata, and taught local children to ride and the older ones, to play polo. Ata worked in three local hospitals and shared his insect and ethnic passions with Vivian.
They walked, rode and climbed, together, in pairs and sometimes individually. Children were never part of the equation. Never. But when Samanthar discovered, (how did that happen?) eighteen months in, that she was pregnant all the men were delighted. Sam, not so much. She had been thinking about the past; and the future. She had been thinking about the mountain where there are no footprints and only God sees where the snow falls… She had been thinking about doorways in time…and Vivian…
That all had to be postponed. Ata told her she was carrying twins. Her twins were born, one of each, to mother and father and two uncles.
This is their story, Gerald Joshua Dayal, and Henrietta, soon to be Dayal and Etta; their lives, their loves in a world without a mother and father…with a mysterious ancestry…you might even say mystical
These are the first 7 books, in the series of The Circular Scrolls. Find out more about upcoming releases by reading the blog. And you can find out more about Bridget and her writing in the About section of the website.