The Mind Has Mountains

Tom Norris has problems of his own, and chief among them is: who is he? It is a time of general stress and strain, for Tom is Assistant Education Officer to the South Sussex Council, and the County Hall, long threatened by wind and rain on its bleak headland, is about to meet its destruction at the hands of a Boundaries Commission. Where can its strange and unnerved inhabitants find another refuge? While Tom pursues his quest for identity and purpose, he reluctantly takes into his office Phoebe Huber, and otherwise rejected member of staff whose meek manner conceals a formidable gift for subversion. Tom begins by feeling sorry for Phoebe, but chaos is her natural element and she is better qualified than Tom to live in it. As little by little she takes possession of him, the South of England is hit by one of the worst blizzards in living memory. The snow blots out the familiar landscape, order breaks down both inside and outside the County Hall, the boundary between reality and fantasy grows indistinct, the wolf returns to the hills.

About the Author :
Born in in London in 1921, Mary was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's Girls School, Acton. During the Second World War she served in the Women's Royal Naval Service (Wrens) attached to the Fleet Air Arm Meteorology branch and then briefly with the Signal Section in Plymouth. Writing was in her blood. Juggling her work as a local government officer in Middlesex Education Department with writing, at first short stories for magazines and pieces for The Times Educational Supplement, she then had her first book, The Winter City, published in 1961. The book was a success and enabled Mary to relinquish her full time occupation to devote her time to writing. Even so, when she came to her beloved Lewes in 1961, she still took a part-time appointment, as a secretary, with the East Sussex Educational Psychology department. Long before family sagas had become cult viewing, she had embarked upon the 'Fairley Family' trilogy - Good Daughters, Indifferent Heroes, and Welcome Strangers - books which give her readers a faithful, realistic and uncompromising portrayal of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary times, between the years of 1933 and 1946. For many years she was an active member of the 'Monday Lit', a Lewes-based group which brought in current writers and poets to speak about their work. Equally, she was an enthusiastic supporter of Lewes Little Theatre, where she found her role as 'prompter' the most satisfying, and worshipped at the town's St Pancras RC Church.