Author from Northamptonshire makes her mark for Mother’s Day

Sarah Toll is painting and giving away a bookmark to people who buy her novel.

With each copy of her novel, Merry Go Round, sold, the author, who is also an artist, is offering to paint a beautiful bookmark.

Each style is different and the bookmark can be personalised, which makes it a wonderful keepsake, or a gift for someone special, such as your mum for Mother’s Day.

Talented Sarah, who lives with her partner Keith and their dog and cats, also illustrated the cover for Merry Go Round, which tells the emotional story of a woman in her 30s called Lily, who flees to the Devon coast after the end of a rollercoaster affair with a charming but callous businessman called Nathaniel.

Sarah, who worked in the NHS for 27 years, set Merry Go Round on a fictional farmstead in Welcombe, north Devon, after staying in the village in 1993 during a 630-mile walk to raise money for a hospice in Hertfordshire.

She said: “We stayed in a tiny cottage in the village, but the event didn’t quite go to plan, as flooding on the last day stopped us from walking. Instead of a walk, we took part in a rescue operation in Bude.”

This memorable trip sparked in Sarah an enduring love of the Devon coast and the seed of a story about love and loss. But it took another dramatic event to give her the incentive to put pen to paper. After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009, she found her focus shifting.

She said: “Following my recovery I began to consider the possibility of living a different sort of life and a few years later, I took early retirement.”

Merry Go Round is published by Wrate’s Publishing and is available on Amazon as a paperback and ebook.

To take advantage of the free bookmark offer, Sarah requires some proof of purchase to be emailed to her at [email protected] and the name to go on the bookmark (if required). She will then create a bookmark send it to an address anywhere in the UK.