"This compelling climax of a seven-book adventure series is suffused in the vitality of the sea, and driven by characters who refuse to be curtailed by disadvantages"
Volume 7 in the Strong Winds series
Voyage North, the seventh and final instalment of Julia Jones’ Strong Winds series, is a thoroughly modern, inclusive adventure. It will also appeal to adult readers who love immersive, thought-provoking stories, taking its scope beyond an exclusively teenage audience.
To set the scene for this novel, the series is underpinned by a love of the sea and the freedom to be had from sailing. It’s also partly inspired by the writer pondering how Arthur Ransom’s Swallows and Amazons characters would have fared in the 21st -century — an undeniably intriguing springboard.
Timely issues around the environment and political power are also addressed through the characters and action — Voyage North is set in 2012 as the new president of Russia takes measures to increase his power, just as the hero, Donny, voyages to the Arctic Circle on an oligarch’s super-yacht with a container of toxic waste. Driven by a real sense of quest and urgency, his journey is nothing but thrilling and thought-provoking.
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As an adult she founded and ran a village bookshop and developed a local publishing list for older readers. She became close friends with Joyce Allingham, sister of Essex detective novelist Margery Allingham, and has written and edited three biographical works connected with the Allingham family with the fourth, Fifty Years in the Fiction Factory, scheduled for publication in 2012. The Salt-Stained Book was her first novel for younger readers and is also enjoyed by adults. Followed up by A Ravelled Flag, the Strong Winds trilogy is concluded with Ghosting Home, out in July 2012. Julia has five children and lives in Essex and Suffolk with her partner, Francis Wheen. In 1999 they re-purchased Peter Duck.
