"The novel is set in the south west of Wales, in northern Pembrokeshire, where I live now. Even today, it’s isolated, west of the mountains, with poor road and rail links. In the nineteenth century it was one of the few areas where the population remained static or fell, while everywhere else it was exploding."

BOOKS BY THORNE MOORE

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AmeriCymru: Hi Thorne and many thanks for agreeing to be interviewed by AmeriCymru. Care to introduce your new book ''Time For Silence'' for our readers?

Thorne: A Time For Silence tells of a girl, Sarah, a one-time singer, from the home counties, near London. She’s going through numerous crises, including an impending marriage to an up and coming company lawyer and a career in advertising that she got into by mistake, and she’s feeling trapped. Returning from a visit to her mother in Ireland, she’s passing through Wales when she chances upon the ruined cottage, Cwmderwen, where her grandparents had lived, and it prompts her to enquire a little more about that side of her family.

When she discovers that her grandfather, John Owen, did not simply die there, but was murdered – a small matter that no one has ever thought to mention, she starts to escape into an obsession with the place, buying the cottage, and embarking on a determined investigation of a crime that happened in 1948. She’s hampered by the fact that the few people still alive who remember it are unwilling or unable to talk about it. Worse, she is a successful English career-girl, living in the twenty-first century, divorced from her grandparents’ world by time, economics, education, language, religion and attitudes. As a result, she misinterprets most of what she is told. But finally, she does come to realise what happened back in 1948.

The reader is there before her, because interwoven with Sarah’s tale is the story of her grandmother, Gwen Owen, from the day of her marriage to John Owen in 1933, through the war years, with a POW camp down the valley, to the aftermath of his death in 1948, and to the reader it is very quickly clear that life in the little cottage of Cwmderwen bore no resemblance whatsoever to the rural idyll, with roses round the door and songs around the piano that Sarah has imagined. It’s a life of grinding poverty and increasing oppression that is doomed from the start.

Once Sarah learns the truth, she realises the pain and trauma that went into ensuring that one good thing emerged from the tragedy, and it’s up to her, now, to make it worth while.

Frenni Fawr, Pembrokeshire From geograph.org.uk Author Dylan Moore Creative Commons Licence

AmeriCymru: Can you describe the area of Wales in which the novel is set for the benefit of our American readers?

Thorne: The novel is set in the south west of Wales, in northern Pembrokeshire, where I live now. Even today, it’s isolated, west of the mountains, with poor road and rail links. In the nineteenth century it was one of the few areas where the population remained static or fell, while everywhere else it was exploding. While the south of the county, known as

Little England, is rolling open farm-land, and almost exclusively English speaking, the northern area of Cemaes, bordering on Ceredigion, is a little lost kingdom all of its own, very wooded, very wild, with tiny bronze-age fields and hills littered with prehistoric monuments and hut circles. It’s the area from which the blue stones of Stonehenge were dragged. In fact, across the road from me is a hilltop circle that has been suggested as the original site of the bluestone circle. The area is still very Welsh: my niece was educated in Welsh before disappearing to the far end of England for university.

There are a lot of images of the area on my website at http://www.thornemoore.co.uk/gallery.html

AmeriCymru: Much of the story is set in in pre-war rural Wales. How did you research the period? What are the most significant ways that rural Welsh lifestyles have changed since those days?

Thorne: I moved to this area 30 years ago, from industrial Luton, and it’s changed a lot in those thirty years of course, but I was startled, when I first arrived, by how different it was to the world I knew. I ran a tea shop in a village where some elderly and talkative customers had memories stretching back to the start of the century, and they used to tell me stories about life in earlier years, as servants in big mansions, or working in the local quarries (long greened over now).

When I moved to my present home, a few miles from the village, I was told of an old cottage nearby where… something had happened (read the book) and everyone knew about it but no one, including the police, had said anything.

I was intrigued, because I could not imagine a situation back in the area where I’d grown up, where it would be possible for secrets to be maintained in this way; someone would have said something. So on a visit to the National Library in Aberystwyth, I took a look at some old copies of the local newspaper, in the vague (and utterly forlorn) hope of finding a mention of the story.

What I did find was a wealth of information about the area in the 1930s and 40s, which painted a very vivid picture of it, including health reports detailing just how poor and malnourished life could be out on the tiny farms. I was particularly struck by a story of a village eisteddfod, just after the war, being won by a German prisoner of war from the local camp. I met several former POWs, who decided to stay on after the war and marry local girls. They were fluent in Italian or German and Welsh, but not so strong on English.

The story that had most effect on me however was a report from a magistrate’s court, in which a young girl was charged with a ‘wicked’ crime that wouldn’t be considered a crime today. The way it was dealt with made a huge impression on me, and I determined to write about it. It has changed, in my book, but the essentials are there. If I am not being explicit, it’s because I don’t want to give the plot away.

Welsh was another matter I had to research, while tearing out my hair. I speak some theoretical Welsh, but in real life every valley seems to have its own dialect, and the Pembrokeshire dialect (probably died out by now) was odder than most. I needed a perfect translation of a couple of phrases, so I sought help from my neighbours, a very local couple and their daughter who chairs the Welsh Language Society: surely they would provide me with the definitive answer. For one three-word sentence they came up with four possible options. I took a deep breath and chose one. I am still waiting for an angry email telling me I got it WRONG!!!

North Pembrokeshire has changed a lot since the time described in the story. It’s changed a lot since I first moved here. Despite Welsh-speaking schools, it’s probably a lot less Welsh-speaking, thanks to an influx of English, retiring here or buying holiday cottages. What industry there was, like quarrying, and even the Ministry of Defense, has more or less vanished, and even farming is on the back foot, but the industry that now overwhelmingly dominates is tourism (please come). We have the most spectacular coast in the country. The world. The universe.

AmeriCymru: Where can people buy the book online?

Thorne: It’s available in print and as an e-book through Amazon, Waterstones, Barnes and Noble and probably many other places.

AmeriCymru: What''s next for Thorne Moore? Are you working on anything at the moment?

Thorne: My second book, Motherlove, which is also set partly in Pembrokeshire, is due to be published some time in the next 12 months (I haven’t been given a date yet) and I am working on polishing a third book, set very much in Pembrokeshire, which is called Shadows at the moment, although the title may change.

AmeriCymru: Any final message for the readers and members of AmeriCymru?

Thorne: Come to Pembrokeshire. Just remember to bring hiking boots and waterproofs.