Frances Brand

Thorns Frances Brand

Traumatised by what he witnessed in the streets of Sarajevo during the 1990s siege, newsman James Lambert flees back to England, seeking peace and recovery in the beauty and apparent tranquillity of the countryside. He'd narrowly escaped death from a Serbian shell and watched his Bosnian lover die

Haunted by memories and the reverberating clamour of guns he takes on a small farm in the Welsh Marches, with a commission to write about the conflict.

Though entranced by the unspoiled beauty of the landscape he settles slowly into a community which seems to him a time warp of ideas and behaviour.

His seclusion is disrupted by a vulnerable girl's appeal to find a home for her young horse and his kindness to her drags him into the mesh of her family's secret guilt.

A letter draws him back to Bosnia and he becomes involved in covering the ongoing search for the bodies of the missing.

His relationship with the girl is threatened by the enmity of her ex-boyfriend but it develops into a love which brings with it dreadful consequences.