Waterstones Leamington Spa to celebrate launch of Caroline Lea's When the Sky Fell

On Thursday 3 March, Waterstones Leamington Spa will be hosting a special event to launch the debut novel from Caroline Lea: When the Sky Fell Apart.

Published 25 February with TEXT Publishing, the novel is a beautiful piece of historical fiction set among the rugged beauty of Jersey during the 1940 occupation.

Jersey was the only British territory to be occupied by the Nazis, a terrifying time for the islanders as 12,000 German troops landed on the beaches and transformed the island into an impregnable fortress. The novel follows the lives of four islanders and their attempts to escape, ten-year-old Claudine who inadvertently befriends a soldier on the beach; Maurice, a local fisherman desperate to help his sick wife; Edith, the island’s unofficial homeopath, and English doctor Tim Carter who is branded a traitor when he’s forced to look after the brutal German Commandant.

When The Sky Fell Apart was reviewed in The Times last week as "a moving and chilling portrait of life under the Nazi heel", and Caroline will also be appearing at Stoke on Trent Literary Festival in June and the Jersey Festival of Words in October. 

Caroline Lea was born and raised in Jersey and can testify to the occupation still being very present in the islander’s consciousness. She gained a First in English Literature and Creative Writing from Warwick University and has poetry published in The Phoenix Anthology and An Aston Anthology, which she also co-edited. When The Sky Fell Apart is her first novel. Find her on Twitter @carolinelealea.

For more information, contact Jess Barratt via jessb@fmcm.co.uk.