The Spanish Connection

About the Book

A new life begins for an orphaned Irish girl in an English Lake District Convent.

As the years pass, Tilly blossoms from a tomboy into a beautiful young woman who meets and falls in love with a young handsome Spanish artist. He has to unexpectedly return to his own country promising to return for her. He gets embroiled in the bloody Spanish civil war and Tilly never sees him again. She is left bereft, alone and pregnant.

What will become of Tilly's daughter, does she find the true love she seeks, will she ever be reunited with a father who doesn't even know she exists?

A chance meeting with an American woman shatters her world as she knows it and she flees the country. A Spanish family take her under their wing and slowly she heals and finds the strength to make a new life and she sets off on the pathway to true happiness only to find it is littered with many heart-rending twists and turns on the often dangerous and unforgetable journey.

About the Author

Maggie Howard was born and spent the first few years of her childhood in the Lake District in Cumbria, England. She is 55 years of age, married, has two grown-up children and four wonderful grandchildren.

Most of her adult life was first spent in Surrey where she ran a busy catering business, and later in Oxford. Here Maggie and her husband bought a derelict bakery in Nuneham Courtenay, the oldest planted village in England, having been relocated in its entirety by the lord of the manor in 1760. This was renovated and turned into an upmarket B&B, which was sold prior to moving to live in the Spanish mountains.

Maggie now runs a successful mortgage broking company whilst her husband, having semi-retired from his architectural business, is busy building their home, which was purchased as a ruin, in the beautiful area of El Chorro, Spain. This seems to be a never-ending project, but a labour of love.

Maggie has always had a love for the written word and avidly consumes books with a passion. Whist living in Oxford she attended many creative writing courses, and when she first resided in Spain she opened a small second-hand bookshop. The initial idea for The Spanish Connection had its beginnings around seven years ago and, on moving to the Spanish mountains a year later, Maggie realised that was where the story would continue. It took another few years before she finally had the plot worked out in her head and eventually had the time to put pen to paper.

Maggie has already begun working on her second novel, Voices.