The Richard & Judy team and Pan Macmillan whittled the entries down to a shortlist of five.
Alison Penton Harper is the first of our 4 featured runners-up...
Alison Penton Harper was born in London in 1964 to an English father and an Indian mother. After a convent education she stumbled into advertising, later setting up her own business. Alison lives in Northamptonshire with her husband and two daughters.
The days I had previously filled with the duties of chief cook and bottle-washer now lay strangely empty – they stretched out before me like a blank canvas. I kept looking at it, but couldn't think of anything to paint...
Preparing dinner for her husband’s colleagues, nervous, and listening to a woman complain about domestic slavery on the radio, Helen Robbins hits the bottle hard. For fifteen years she has lived a life of suburban predictability with Robert, bending to his boorish demands and allowing her once vital, independent spirit to retreat into the safe cage of mundane, dutiful routine. Over supper that evening she decides to throw off her role of domestic angel and hit him where it hurts: she dares to criticize his driving.
Riled by his wife’s comments, an irate Robert sets out the next morning to prove himself and is killed in a freak accident. Helen’s life is about to be transformed.
As she rekindles relationships with old friends and close family, Helen discovers again the excitement of her former world. Tentatively stepping back into the fold, imbued with a new sense of power and adventure, she discovers for the first time the possibility of a relationship on her own terms – as well as certain thrills she never quite believed possible. And the surprises are only just beginning...
