L.P. Fergusson’s debut novel, A Dangerous Act of Kindness, has been snapped up by Canelo.
Set against the backdrop of the Second World War, this moving story was highly commended in the Caledonian Novel Award, judged by Madeleine Milburn last year, and will appeal to fans of Rachel Hore and Santa Montefiore.
Struggling with grief for her late husband, and under pressure from the Ministry of Agriculture to increase the yield from her Oxfordshire farm, Millie Sanger is already feeling the cost of war. But then she finds an injured German pilot in her barn, and is faced with a new kind of threat.
Rescued by the English woman, all Lukas Schiller can think about is fixing his shoulder and heading out into the blizzard to begin his escape back to occupied France and his beloved Luftwaffe. But he didn’t count on the growing intimacy with Millie, which quickly develops into a passionate affair that neither of them are willing to relinquish…
Forced apart through circumstances beyond their control, they are both haunted by the repercussions of their encounter. Those closest to Millie suddenly become her greatest threat. Lukas’s ideals are left shattered and abandoned. And while Lukas does all that he can to return to her side, Millie runs the risk of paying the ultimate price: a traitor’s death.
Is all of that worth just one dangerous act of kindness?
Loraine Fergusson gained an MA in Creative Writing with Distinction at Oxford Brookes University in 2016 and has since won, and been shortlisted for, several literary prizes. She is the editor of the historical blog With Love from Graz, featuring love letters between her parents separated by war, which has been featured on BBC Radio Wales, Radio 2 and the BBC4 programme A Very British Romance with Lucy Worsley. She lives in rural Oxfordshire, where her first novel is set.
A Dangerous Act of Kindness will be published in March 2019.
