Contemplation and Reconsideration
A senior diplomat traumatised by the violent death of his wife moves back to UK with his now fifteen-year-old, greatly distressed daughter to become Professor of International Relations at a new university. A high school teacher in a neighbouring town befriends the girl and remonstrates with her father at his overly protective care of her. A loving relationship develops as the teacher and the girl form a mutually strong bond of love.
The book interweaves council debates full of frustration and conflict about renewal of the historic but declining small town of the action. The imminent closure of the local newspaper provides opportunity for caustic comment.
David William Paley was born in Sandhurst and, until retirement, held several financial control positions in international companies. He lived in Germany for four years but now lives with his French wife in Buckinghamshire.
‘The Fallen Tree’ is his sixth novel in a series that dismisses the obsession with the double and triple murders that seem regularly to feature in the current unhealthy mode of entertainment. He prefers the subject of life and love rather than death and its morbidity.
His books are literary, non-salacious, adult fiction. They place an emphasis on psychological depth of character and story development- mostly romance with its difficulties and resolution but, usually, with a happy end.
His interests are conversation, reading, classical music and opera, and German language. He has created a web site, www.poemswithoutfrontiers.com, that displays several hundred English, French and German poems in their original texts each with his translations into the other two languages.
As David Paley, he has published four Kindle books of poetry, including anthologies of French and German poems in ‘101 French Poems’ and ‘150 German Poems’ containing poems in their original texts each followed by his translation into English. The second edition of ‘Visions and Illusions’ appears in both print and Kindle editions and contains ninety poems.