My current obsession has no working title

A novel about a young woman from my home town, Stoke-on-Trent–the Staffordshire Potteries. Set in the years immediately before and after World War II, it’s story about balancing duty to family and desire to succeed as an artist, while growing up. I’m revising, hoping to be ready for beta reading in September 2021. Title suggestions welcome!

_{Photo: Judith Chopra}

Seeking representation: Unsuitable Girl

Here’s the elevator pitch: an effervescent girl from Nairobi’s traditional Punjabi community dreams of opening a restaurant. But before she can follow her own dream, she needs to follow her family’s: she must get married.

In beta reading: What Happened at Blindbend Farm

A novel about a group of middle school children in the 1960s is in revision. The kids are on a week-long escape from the suburbs at their teacher’s farm in cottage country, but there’s something very wrong about the teacher’s friends….It’s mayhem and murder, and lots of things that would never happen to children today–but it was the sixties. The working title is What Happened at Blindbend Farm.B eta readers  welcome!

Published

Non-Fiction: Something Worth Doing, W.W. Norton, New York

In May 1985 Aqua Star, a custom-built steel cutter, set out from Toronto for Churchill, Manitoba, on the west shore of Hudson Bay. No sailing vessel had ventured beyond Hudson Strait since the 19th century; it was a sparsely inhabited area of harsh terrain with ice-and fog-bound coasts. On board were the owner-skipper Leslie Sike and wife Carolann, both in their 40s; also Gay Currie, a young woman with sailing experience, and David Farr, a photographer. Chopra, who covered the voyage for Canadian Yachting and had access to the personal journals and ship’s log, here re-creates the adventure in a gripping narrative of derring-do and of discord. Nearing Hudson Strait the sailors encountered ice; in the Bay they ran into heavy weather and fog. Arguments and ill-feeling continued unabated. That September, after 108 days and 3600 miles, Aqua Star reached Churchill. And all agreed, as will readers, that the voyage was something worth doing. From Publisher’s Weekly, copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

 The reader gets a beautiful photographic glimpse of sub arctic Canada and an interesting sociological glimpse of the four crew members as they make a record-setting trek across Hudson Bay in a 40-foot sailboat.  Amazon reviewer