A novel by local writer Julia Gregson is flying off the shelves after featuring on the Richard and Judy Summer Read list. East of the Sun, currently at number seven on the Best Sellers List, is a fascinating story of three girls who travel out to India in 1928 as members of what used to be called "the fishing fleet." "It was a fairly brutal business, says Julia, "If you didn't find a husband during the London season you were shipped off to India and if you weren't lucky, you were called a returned empty." "My husband, Richard, told me about it because his mother went out with the fishing fleet." Julia was also influenced by her memories of "a wonderful" childhood friend, Mrs Smith Pearse. "She was my best friend when I was five and she was in her 60s and we lived in a house in Hampshire. "She had just come back from India where her husband was Head master of a boys school there. She had all these dressing up trunks full of little Maharajah clothes, and we used to dress up and she told me all these stories about India. "The strange thing was that many years later I found out that her nephew lived near Monmouth and he had a set of tapes that had been recorded of her life. "It was very moving to hear her voice again - she was a magnetic grown up for children and I realised that India when she lived there was a very tough place for children to be educated and the fact that she, a very good nurse, hadn't been able to work there because it wasn't the done thing." Julia herself has made several visits to India - the first, when she was working as a journalist, was to do a story on a refugee camp in Bangladesh to interview raped woman. She has made two further visits to India to research her book, travelling first to Rajasthan and next to Bombay and Poona. "Taking the train up to Simla and listening to Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass through headphones, was a blissful moment," she recalls. Poking around the old cantonments in Poona was fascinating too. Julia, who left school at 16, had always wanted to be a writer. She also loved travelling and has worked as a jillaroo in the Australian outback, a girl groom, a shearer's cook, and later, back in England, as a house model for Hardy Amies in London. In the seventies, back in Australia again, her love of horses led to her riding out with Mick Jagger on the set of Ned Kelly and to her first published article in The Sydney Morning Herald. She later worked in New York as a foreign correspondent for a group of Australian magazines and has written for The Times and Good Housekeeping. Julia, who has one daughter, has lived in Whitebrook for the past 23 years and teaches feature writing at Cardiff University. Her first novel, The Waterhorse, published in 2005, is about a Welsh girl who runs away with a group of Welsh cattle drovers. "I rode a horse across Wales to do the research - a wonderful experience - and then went to Istanbul and Scutari where the rest of the novel is set. " Julia is thrilled that her latest novel has been shortlisted by Richard and Judy and that East of the Sun received favourable reviews on Wednesday's show. "The comedienne Sally Phillips said she loved it!" "It's all been really exciting." East of the Sun is published by Orion.
