The Swallow And The Dark

Description

A moving tale about mortality told through the eyes of two teenagers - one contemporary, and one in the World War I trenches Sam is sixteen - and fighting a war with his own body. Sam has been diagnosed with an incurable illness that gives him only months to live, meaning that now he has so little left, time has suddenly become very important to him. And nearly a hundred years ago, another Sam - a lieutenant in the British Army - is off to fight a different kind of war, on the Western Front. He knows that he may not survive. Linking the two is a girl named Marion. But is Marion just a figment of Sam's imagination - a hallucination caused by his medication - or something far more extraordinary? Could she somehow be . . . a bridge across time itself?

Andrew Matthews read English and Modern History at Reading University before qualifying as a teacher and teaching English for over twenty years. He has written three previous novels for young readers and, in l994, left teaching to concentrate on writing as a full-time career. Married and the owner of several cats, his love of animals has led him to become a member of the UK Wolf Conservation Trust and his other interests include music, astronomy, reading and playing the guitar.