Hazel

As a child I dreamed of three things: to write books; to go to India; to live a life in tune with nature — strange dreams for an East London girl.

For a long time I walked another path, a more conventional one, becoming, eventually a company CEO. 

But India called me time and again. I answered, and two things happened there that unmade everything. The idea for my first novel, Kanyakumari, rose up like a flower finally ready to bloom. And I met and fell in love with a beautiful French man.

Two years later Kanyakumari won the Cinnamon Press Literature Award. That same year I made a leap of faith. I left the boardroom and followed my love to France. 

Three novels later, that French man is my husband and we live in the wilds of La France Profound, hidden among vines and trees. We grow fruit and vegetables. We forage for wild food. We teach yoga together. We live by the seasons, listening to what the land is teaching us.

My books emerged from the terrible disconnect from earth and trees and stars, the chasm we humans have put between ourselves and our Mother Earth. 

They are novels that ask: how can we live a life that doesn’t make us want to scream?

My stories follow modern women — women who are both strong and vulnerable,  complex, messy, questioning. Who are learning to fully inhabit their own truth and depth in our imperfect world.

At the heart of each of my books is an existential ache: ambition and loss, sexuality and mental health, business and moral choice, community and friendship, the search for home.

Novels for introverts. For seekers. For anyone who has ever felt that there might might be something more profound at life’s core.