Description of Hazel's Story
We follow the strength of the human spirit as it is explicitly laid bare by Hazel on this journey through four generations to the present day.
The story begins with the mystery surrounding her grandmother’s death in 1935, only weeks after she had attempted to throw her own seven-year-old daughter, Bess, from an upstairs bedroom window. Hazel’s grandfather then burnt all records pertaining to his wife and forbade her name ever to be mentioned.
It isn’t until Hazel treads the same path as her grandmother and sees beyond death that the mystery begins to unravel. Terrifyingly Hazel loses the battle with three men who forced her into a psychiatric unit. Has she in fact lost her mind? What presence is it exactly that visits her while she’s there? The prophesy this presence foretells is so unimaginable that she can’t bring herself to speak of it.
And yet, years later, with a perfect life and her own garden design and horticultural business, the unthinkable appears to materialise.
However, it is Hazel’s tales of daily life, centred around an old, bohemian fishing village, together with her deep appreciation of nature and our wonderful planet, that shines through this remarkable true story.
Hazel aged 20 on Portland, Devon in 1973
About Hazel Lakeland
I still live in Hadleigh, Essex, in the exact house where my book ends, very happily with my third husband. It was he who encouraged me to write my unusual true story. However it wasn't until his daughter had completed her Creative Writing Degree and offered to help guide me that I felt able to do so. And as I began the words really just poured out. However, without my mother's brilliant memory and her friendship with my father's stepmother, I could not have told the story. Sadly my mother passed away before the book was finished. But I was able to visit my Aunt Bess in Australia with one of the first copies of my book and, as she well remembers her mother's attempt to push her out of an upstairs window, was so pleased to finally understand what happened to her.