The Red Umbrella

From the Brazil of his boyhood, he’d brought her a plant which could sense good and evil. Its frail viridian fingers curled whenever her mother entered the room. Without him, she wouldn’t have survived that time. Without him.

When Lana Gill loses her beloved grandfather on the same day as her husband, Conor, ends their marriage, she believes her life has reached its lowest limit.

Except fate hasn’t finished with Lana yet. A suitcase of her grandfather’s papers opens doors into her family history, taking her on a journey from the Amazon jungle to Stalingrad, Auschwitz, Thailand and America as she follows an unexpected trail through war, murder and exile.

But Lana herself has a painful past she refuses to face, one which threatens her new-found happiness with the young actor, Step Sheedy, and leads her to a final desperate choice between insanity and acceptance.