Why I wrote...

A Quiet Belief in Angels is ultimately about the indomitable nature of the human spirit.

I have always been amazed by the degree to which human beings can survive some of the worst the world has to offer, and yet retain their humanity. From my own background, personally and professionally, I know how tough childhood misery can be, and this has become a theme in all of my novels.

Joseph Vaughan, a boy of twelve, whose life we follow for over sixty years, faces numerous personal tragedies – first, the death of his father, and then as part of a small, close-knit farming community in the late 1930s struck by the horror of a series of child murders. Thereafter, Joseph carries a sense of guilt and responsibility. His innocence has been shattered; his perspective of the world dramatically altered, and he finds himself compelled to discover the truth of what happened.

A Quiet Belief in Angels is Joseph’s story of personal redemption and what he is willing to sacrifice to get there. It is also about many other things – the nature of injustice; racism and the claustrophobia of small-town life – but most of all it is a novel about the power of an individual to survive in the face of unending tragedy.

R.J. Ellory