STRUCTURE: Morton uses a lot of time shifts in The Distant Hours. The Distant Hours offers what I’ve come to expect from Morton’s work – secrets, lies, mystery and suspense. I’ve read Morton’s other novels, The House at Riverton and The Secret Keeper. The truth of what happened in the distant hours has been waiting a long time for someone to find it… But there are other secrets hidden in the stones of Milderhurst Castle, and Edie is about to learn more than she expected. Inside the decaying castle, Edie begins to unravel her mother’s past. Old ladies now, the three still live together, the twins nursing Juniper, whose abandonment by her fiancé in 1941 plunged her into madness. She discovers the joys of books and fantasy and writing, but also, ultimately, the dangers.įifty years later, as Edie chases the answers to her mother’s riddle, she, too, is drawn to Milderhurst Castle and the eccentric Sisters Blythe. In the grand and glorious Milderhurst Castle, a new world opens up for Edie’s mother. Edie Burchill and her mother have never been close, but when a long lost letter arrives one Sunday afternoon with the return address of Milderhurst Castle, Kent, printed on its envelope, Edie begins to suspect that her mother’s emotional distance masks an old secret.Įvacuated from London as a thirteen year old girl, Edie’s mother is chosen by the mysterious Juniper Blythe, and taken to live at Milderhurst Castle with the Blythe family: Juniper, her twin sisters and their father, Raymond, author of the 1918 children’s classic ‘The True History of the Mud Man’.

Charlie sunshine by lily morton