I read The Woman Who Came Back To Life by Beth Miller on holiday in Italy in September, finishing it on the plane home just before a very dicey thunderstorm-landing. It’s a lovely book about forgiveness, redemption, breakdown and rebuilding.

Pearl Flowers (great name) has been hiding away in a wood in France for a few years with her husband Denny when she gets a call from her brother to say that her estranged father is in hospital. She chooses to face her demons and go back to England to say goodbye.

What unfolds is the unpicking of what happened between her and her father Francis, through the medium of his diaries, which he has left to her to decode and read. Denny is unimpressed, as are her half-siblings who want the diaries back before any secrets about their mother are spilled, but Pearl is determined to press on.

More secrets unfold as a strange man turns up in the woods and a young woman gets in touch with some big news. Pearl’s world is turned upside down, as are all of her relationships, but the end is one of hope for an uncertain but brighter future.