Tobias Stoller's Farm: Fiction

The story charts the lives of three families in Switzerland over 175 years. Nothing is what it appears. Valerie Stoller, 16, bears a son, Magnus. Her sister Anna, months later, bears a daughter, Emma. Both babies are begotten through incest with their own father, Gusti. Through the services of Sister Valentine, of 'the Mission' both babies are adopted by a childless couple, Veronika and Walter Kronmaier and Valerie and Anna, unencumbered now, go on to marry wealthy brothers, respectively, Bernhard and Otto Bergmann, without declaring their past, on Sister Valentine's advice. Valerie's union is childless, but Anna'a marriage produces two children, Mangold and Klara, who is wilful. The adopted children, Magnus and Emma do well in life but have no contact with their true parents, but twenty years on, Anna is forced to face up to her past when her son, Mangold unwittingly marries his half sister, Emma, who is 15 years older. Anna eventually learns who Emma is, because they all share the same house after the death of Anna's husband and she compares her incestuous relationship with her father to that with her husband Otto and finds it wanting. The Kronmaiers never tell Magnus and Emma they are adopted and only when both die in a freak accident on a mountain path, does Magnus learn of his true and shameful provenance, but decides to shield his sister from that, to spare her the shame. Magnus marries Louie, future mother of Tobias Stoller, their only child that has survived infancy. Tobias runs the Stoller Farm after his father's death and eventually has five children of his own, of which the eldest son, Lukas, has a shock surprise for the family through a connection with Klara and Sophie, the eldest daughter falls in love with an 'unsuitable' farm hand and the past comes back to haunt the families. ll the families are in one way or another connected with each other, either through birth or through marriage and this throws up a few surprises.

About the Author :
the author is born in Switzerland and has also written a three volume autobiography. VANISHED TIMES, charts her life from birth in 1938 and her childhood, to 1960, when she leaves Switzerland and goes to England to learn English and decides to stay there and make her life in England. WALK INTO THE UNKNOWN is her life from 1960 to 1992, with all the ups and downs and failed relationships, but fun times too. ROLLERCOASTER is her last volume. She has acquired a second family and it charts her life from 1992 to 2012. it is still not a bed or roses, but a veritable Rollercoaster, but she has a nice take on life's humourous side. TOBIAS STOLLER'S Farm is her first novel, but she has also written a trilogy: THE HAT THAT DANCED IN THE WIND, to be published later this year, that deals with slavery, female circumcision and murder. The story is told over a span of 200 years.