The Strength of the Mountain

About the Book

Picture Mummy

This story begins in modern day Cornwall and tells how a young woman meets the man of her dreams, forming a good relationship which, ultimately leads to marriage.

Two months into the union tragedy strikes in the form of an airplane crash over the sea wherein the wife and pilot are lost.

Her husband is unable to fully come to terms with this and becomes very morose and severe, throwing himself into his work for consolation.

His family seems cursed with tragedy for his only sister’s husband is killed while on a U.N. mission and later she also dies of an illness.

Her considerable wealth is left to her brother and he is asked to care for her little adopted daughter.

The middle part of the story deals with the history of the child and how she became adopted by his sister. The trauma of a sensitive child is dealt with and her response to being sent to a strange house far away from anyone who knew her.

She becomes strangely attached to a full-scale framed photograph of a beautiful women whom she refers to as her mummy (from which the story takes its name). She is apparently haunted by the spectre of the woman in the picture but with a healing affect.

The last part of the story is about John at last coming to terms with the loss of his wife and truly owning his little Niece. This leads to a surprising set of circumstances and an unexpected ending.

Heather’s Eden.

Heather is a thoroughly modern 21st century fourteen-year-old girl. Her hobbies are Aikido and reading. She comes across an old book that contains an ancient riddle. It turns out to be a trigger that sends her into a mysterious dead world.

The story is about what she did there and how she brought the world to life.

The middle part of the story is about the awful price she had to pay for her action.

The story ends with her promotion to the realms of the sky and her affect on the order of chaos she found there. There is a great reward for this and she is called by a being of awesome splendour to take on the role of a New Eve hinting strongly of something else and ends with a new beginning.

Flat Cap Jesus.

The story after a glowing start deals with the problem of parental obsession. The Father in this case becomes obsessed with his little baby son to the exclusion of his young and beautiful wife.

The child dies and tips the demented father into an unacceptable behaviour pattern.

Throwing himself into his work as a Martial arts Grand Master, he makes a great gulf between himself and his wife who still deeply loves him. Even when she gives birth to their second child a little girl he continues to isolate himself from them.

His wife for the sake of normality divides their large house in two and they then live separate lives.

The whole thing comes to a head on the night of the little girls seventh birthday.

Her husband finds an intruder in his part of the house and gets himself totally disabled by him. After issuing a chilling threat the intruder goes through the dividing door to his wife and daughter’s quarters.

After a time the husband is released from the paralysis that had gripped him and fearful of what he might find goes through to his wife and daughter’s room. What he finds there is the point of the story.

The Hole. (Divine Intervention?)

This is a life view through the eyes of a young boy living in Belfast in the early 1950s. It seeks to capture the wonderful spirit that existed in close nit communities just after the war.

It is centered around a hole dug by the water-board and a mysterious box they found in it.

A whole series of events takes place and leaves the reader wondering, “Was it good natured play acting on behalf of Mrs Cobb that fired the boys imagination,” or was there really some divine intervention.

The Witness.

The Somerset levels abound with reports of unexplained events and strange happenings. This story takes bits of Arthurian legend and interweaves them with real events

About the Author

Having been in Church Leadership for thirty years and met with situations that defy rational explanation, this is reflected in my stories. Many of my tales are parables containing hidden meanings which, if looked for can be found. This aside they are cracking good stand alone yarns.