Efa

Growing up in the valleys of South Wales, Bryn Ellis's childhood is ravaged by the 1984 miners' strike. Thirty years on, he is a Detective Chief Inspector based at New Scotland Yard with a difficult case to solve. The ramifications force him to revisit the torments of his early life which still cast dark shadows.

Efa is the sequel to Toy Soldier. Ten years on Theo Kendrick, is a celebrated professor about to retire and move to London to support Mia, the child he rescued from war-torn Iraq. Now a human rights QC, Mia is about to launch her Lotus Hub Foundation project, She is still battling demons from her past, including being abandoned on her wedding day by Bryn Ellis nearly seven years earlier. The love she once felt for him has long since soured to a bitter hostility.

A happenchance of the investigation throws Bryn back into the path of Mia and the full force of her animosity. In a further twist, his estranged brother turns up after an absence of three decades. The bad blood between them has not abated, each still blaming the other for grievous deeds done to them in their past.

Familiar characters from the prequel Toy Soldier weave in and out as the shocking events of the investigation unfold. The consequences re-shape the lives of the protagonists struggling to untangle knots of injustice and misconceptions that mirror their own.

Efa is a story of love, loss, betrayal and self-discovery; a story about survival and ultimately of hope.

A mother of three, R P Salmon grew up in a Lancashire mill town where her grandmother was a cotton weaver. She has had careers in social work, teaching and academia and draws on them all in her writing. Renowned for ground-breaking academic publications, she writes fiction under the pseudonym R P Salmon, tackling gritty issues and intricate human relationships. Efa is the sequel to her debut novel Toy Soldier. She is a keen exponent of the power of story to reach different people in different ways and stay with them for different reasons.