Brighton author Joanna Rees completes trilogy - and hints at more to come

Joanna has loved writing the books so much that she can’t bear to leave them behind…

The series began with The Runaway Daughter. It’s 1926 and Anna Darton is on the run from a terrible crime she was forced into committing.

Alone and scared in London, salvation comes in the form of Nancy, a sassy American dancer at the notorious nightclub, the Zip. Re-inventing herself as Vita Casey, Anna becomes part of the line-up and is thrown into a hedonistic world of dancing, parties, flapper girls and fashion.

For book three, its now 1929 and would-be fashion designer Vita is now living a much more sedate life in New York with her baby son, Bertie, far away from her evil brother, Clement, and her nemesis, Edith. When the disastrous events of the Wall Street Crash change their destinies, Vita and Nancy flee to Los Angeles where Nancy is determined to make it in the talkies.

Schmoozing their way into the ranks of the Hollywood elite, Vita is starting to think that she can begin to fulfill her fashion ambitions. But when the love of her life Archie is hired as a writer on Nancy’s new movie and Clement exacts his ultimate revenge, Vita’s past and present collide.

“I wrote a lot of it in lockdown and what a joy it was to transfer myself to 1930 Hollywood when the talkies were just starting. It was the start of the great Golden Age of Hollywood and I took these two characters that arrived there with a couple of suitcases and a baby and put them in this wonderful era.

“I travel around the world in my pyjama bottoms! I did some of my research with some amazing old Pathe newsreels that I watched and I also really got into the music of that time. It was lockdown and the kids were home and I was listening to the music while I was writing, listening to this amazing 20s and 30s jazz and these amazing scores in the background.

"I also had a few incredible books on the architecture of the time and about this incredible era of prosperity and hope that was being driven by the movies. The movies were driving what people were wearing and what they were doing and it was great fun to have walk-on parts with the movie stars in the book This is the final part. Vtia is tracked down by Clement once and for all. She has no choice but to face her past. There is no choice at all for her. She has got to go back. The clue is in the title. She must return to face what has happened. But yes I could revive her. Hopefully there will be more in the series.

"I absolutely loved writing the books so much. It was fun picking an era and immersing myself in it and just evoking that era. You have to really get a sense of that era to make it feel real; you have to use all the senses, the tastes and smells and the sights.

"I just loved doing it.”