I have Chris Stewart’s Driving Over Lemons (1999) to thank for bringing Juliette to my attention. When he and his wife took on a remote farm in the Alpujarras in the 1990s, her Herbal Handbook for Farm and Stable (1952) was their go-to resource for dealing with sick animals.
In my thinking and writing about Spain, I have been particularly influenced by Giles Tremlett’s excellent analysis of Civil War secrets, Ghosts of Spain (2006). Gerald Brenan’s South from Granada (1957) provided fascinating details about the way of life in the Alpujarras in the first half of the last century. Jason Webster’s Duende (2003) and Sacred Sierra (2009) gave me an insight into the world of flamenco and the timeless customs of rural Spain.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’m grateful to all my friends in Spain for their encouragement during the writing of The Snow Gypsy and for the insights they gave into a country that still has so many buried secrets. Particular thanks to Christina Aldridge and Loli Muñoz, who were kind enough to correct my very poor Spanish.
Thank you to Jodi Warshaw and everyone at Lake Union for the wonderful job they do and to my editor, Christina Henry de Tessan, for her perceptive suggestions.
Huge thanks to my friend Janet Thomas for her inspiration, her wise advice, and the many happy lunches we have had over the years.
Finally, I have my close family to thank: Mum and Dad for their unflagging enthusiasm; my children, Ciaran, Ruth, Isabella, and Deri, for making me laugh and helping me negotiate the minefield of modern technology; Steve, my husband, for his constant good humor, even at absurd hours of the morning, and for all the fun we’ve had exploring Spain together.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2017 Isabella Ashford
Raised in Wolverhampton in the United Kingdom, Lindsay Jayne Ashford became the first woman to graduate from Queens’ College, Cambridge, in its 550-year history. She earned a degree in criminology and was a reporter for the BBC before becoming a freelance journalist, writing for a number of national magazines and newspapers.
Lindsay began her career as a novelist with a contemporary crime series featuring forensic psychologist Megan Rhys. She moved into historical mystery with The Mysterious Death of Miss Jane Austen, and her three most recent books, Whisper of the Moon Moth, The Color of Secrets, and The Woman on the Orient Express, blend fiction with real events of the early twentieth century.
She has four children and divides her time between a house overlooking the sea on the west coast of Wales and a small farmhouse in Spain’s Sierra de Los Filabres. When she’s not writing, she enjoys volunteering for Save the Children, kayaking, and walking her dogs, Milly and Pablo.
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