As we go through life we weather many storms.
We lose family members, close friends and animals we love, and they take with them the warmth and shared memories of many years. Alice discovered recently that the loss of a much-loved tree, planted before she was born, caused an emotional upheaval she had not anticipated. With the loss of her favourite tree that had enriched her life for decades, she began to ask herself are there ways to make later life rich and interesting? How do you make growing older a good time in life?
She has no answers, only a story to be shared.
Alice Taylor lives in the village of Innishannon in County Cork, in a house attached to the local supermarket and post office. Her first book, To School Through the Fields, was published in 1988. It was an immediate success and quickly became the biggest selling book ever published in Ireland.
Alice has written nearly twenty books since then, largely exploring her beloved village and the ways of life in rural Ireland. She has also written poetry and fiction: her first novel, The Woman of the House, was an immediate bestseller. Most recently, she wrote a children's picture book with her daughter Lena Angland, called Ellie and the Fairy Door.
Emma Byrne is a graphic designer and artist. She is a graduate of Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design. She has won numerous awards for her design including The IDI (Irish Design Institute) Graduate Designer of the Year, the IDI Promotional Literature Award for her work on Brown Morning, and a Childrens Books Ireland Bisto Merit Award for her work on Something Beginning With P: New Poems from Irish Poets. She has illustrated many books, including Best-Loved Oscar Wilde, Best-Loved Yeats, The Most Beautiful Letter in the World by Karl ONeill, a special edition of Ulysses by James Joyce, and A Terrible Beauty by Mairéad Ashe Fitzgerald. Her other books are Irish Thatch and, with Eoin OBrien, Best-Loved Irish Ballads.
