Sempre: Finding Home

When an old man dies in a London park, a family heirloom slips from his finger, and is found by a young woman who is instrumental in reuniting the past with the present as old and new love stories are told. Through these interweaving stories we witness destiny’s hand in both historic and contemporary Portugal and Britain, and the drama comes not from villains in black cloaks, but from situations which are out of the characters’ control. It is due to the trials of these ordinary people, and a happy ending that ties in so many of the plot’s strings, that this is one of those stories you will want to read a second time in order to fully appreciate how the characters’ lives overlap, and the hand fate plays. This story owes a great amount to four songs: ‘Ordinary Girl’ by Alison Moyet; the author wanted to know why the protagonist of the ‘story’ thought she had to leave the way she did. ‘Take a Drunk Girl Home’; a country song about a man who takes a drunk girl home and doesn’t take advantage of the situation. ‘Symphony’ by Sarah Brightman; about the end of a love affair that leaves one half of the couple uncertain of what went wrong. The fourth song is, ‘If You Could Read My Mind’ by Gordon Lightfoot; it mentions ‘a ghost in a wishing-well’ and was a spur for writing about the mystery which the author feels has a place in all our lives…