The Bridge at Locri

It’s 1963 and a group of young pacifists have signed up to change the world, volunteering to build a small road bridge for a community near Locri, a town in Calabria, southern Italy.These disparate characters begin as comrades working for a common cause, yet their ideals are tested in arguments over the collective good versus the rights of the individual, while personal desires quickly create further schism. The touch paper is lit when one of the volunteers, Italian heiress Isabella, who has affairs with two members of the group, disappears in an area notorious for the presence of the ’Ndrangheta mafia. Instead of murder or kidnapping for ransom could there be a much simpler explanation? The Bridge at Locri is, on one level, a mystery novel, in which the mystery is approached from the different perspectives of six narrators. On another, it’s a book which spans sixty years and charts the stories of the principal characters who, after Locri, go back to their own countries, with the missing but ever-present Isabella looming over all their lives. This elegant page-turning novel draws you into a wider view, offering a panorama of six decades of our history brought to us by the voices of intelligent, passionate and flawed characters from different corners of the world: Bosnia, East Germany, Colombia, Australia, Italy, Malawi and England.

Table of Contents:
CONTENTS Dedication    vii PART ONE RETURN TO LOCRI  2023                 3 PART TWO BUILDING THE BRIDGE  1963      15 PART  THREE ISABELLA’S JOURNAL  1963    81 PART FOUR THE YEARS BETWEEN Chapter One        1968       Amar    111 Chapter Two       1973       Oliver    127 Chapter Three     1975       Thomas    143 Chapter Four       1983       Maria    159 Chapter Five        1989       Adam    173 Chapter Six          1995       Amar    187 Chapter Seven     2003       Oliver    205 Chapter Eight      2008       Thomas    221 Chapter Nine       2013       Maria    233 Chapter Ten        2018       Adam     249 PART FIVE A MEETING IN LOCRI  2023    269 Afterword    286

About the Author :
Mark Allen is a magazine publisher, a former Professional Publishers Association Editor of the Year, and author, who lives in London and Wiltshire. His company, the Mark Allen Group, of which he is the executive chairman, publishes more than a hundred magazines and organises around two hundred exhibitions, conferences and other events a year in twelve different business and consumer sectors. In 2023 he was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Business Admini-stration by Richmond American University London. His first novel, Life Term, a psychological thriller, was published by Colenso Books in 2021 to critical acclaim, receiving around seventy reviews on Amazon. Three of his poems were published, again by Colenso Books, in The Covid Years: a composite journal from many hands in poetry prose and pictures (2023). Married with four children and seven grandchildren, Mark is interested in both jazz and classical music and enjoys walking, swimming and watching cricket and rugby.