Illiterate downtrodden Guliya, mother of many children, is Sonia's hostess. The two women seem different at first, but thirty-something Sonia realises that Guliya is of a similar age and there are other parallels in the two women's lives. Under the guidance of Guliya and the dashing young Mr Rekraj Dickshit, Sonia gets involved with the small community, a community in flux. Castes are at odds with each other – as ever. Slavery had been abolished only a couple of years before and the villagers are still struggling to find roles that will ensure a full belly throughout the year. Rekraj sees ill-omens, there are earth-tremors and he understands that Lord Shiva is angry. Guliya’s teenage daughter, Moti, takes Sonia on a small pilgrimage into the mountains and the English woman is moved by the Nepali’s faith and spirituality. The idyll is shattered though and the trip turns into more of an adventure than Sonia bargained for.

The 93,000-word narrative is told from the points of view of Sonia and also of the Nepalis she lives with. We see the idiocy and pointless anxiety of Westerners as described by the Nepalis, contrasted with the Brit’s initially patronising view of the primitiveness, lack of sophistication and undemonstrativeness in the villagers. The imagery and detail of the lives of people of different castes comes from the author’s six-year stay in Nepal. It is a life-affirming read and forms a fictional sequel to A Glimpse of Eternal Snows.

“The characters are delightful, especially the way the Nepalese see things so, so differently . . .” Sally Radnor of Cambridge Writers.

Opening page of Snowfed Waters

I was wrenched awake at the tail-end of a stifled scream. I fight my way up from a deep dark dream into a place I didn’t know.
‘Who’s there?!’
My heart thumped against my ribs. I caught my breath, straining my ears to catch the tiniest clue. Nothing was there. The scream had been mine. I moved a little, feeling the softness of the muslins against my face. I felt for the reassuring swirls of my amulet at my neck. For a while I could hear nothing but my heartbeat. Then the silence was punctuated by little scratchings and ferrettings. There was a nasty rasping that could have been a snake. Or scorpions.
I must have slept for quite a while; my bladder was full to bursting now. That was what had woken me. I cursed the fact I’d been too scared to use that hole-in-the-ground toilet before I’d settled for the night. I didn’t want to move from the safety of the covers but I had to go. No choice.
I  reached out for the hurricane lamp imagining the awful things my hand might meet in the dark. I felt cold metal and disgustingly oiliness. I groped for matches. I struck one and the room unfolded as it flared. I was transfixed by the miracle of being able to see again. I checked the shadowy corners of the cell-like room. Nothing. I sat on the bed-edge – until the match burned my fingers and I dropped it. Darkness again. Unidentifiable noises again. I was sure I heard small feet scampering over the floor. I bent down again for the matches; struck another. I turned up the wick, raised the lamp-glass and lit the lamp. There. I was really quite competent. I could do this. I held the light high so that I could see my way to the silent, deserted outside. The area where the women had been cooking was clean and tidy. All the hens were under baskets. Everyone was asleep. I wouldn’t need to use the lean-to. I could just pee in the vegetable patch.
Carefully I picked my way between big leaves that sprounted from the ground. I found a gap, I set down the lamp and squatted. Relief at last. But then I registered sounds coming from the verandah. Something was moving over there. It sounded large. A predator. Maybe there were several. Was it a nocturnal creature – hunting? Or jackals? Some other flesh-eater maybe?
The reality was worse. I was horrified to recognise giggling. People. I’d assumed this was the middle of the night and that everyone would be asleep. But they’d seen. And they’d tell everyone that the clumsy foreigner had peed on their vegetables. I pulled up my trousers. Wet running down my legs made them stick. I fled inside, not daring to look towards the verandah. I climbed back into bed. Like a small child, I hid from my shame. Safe, under the covers. I was disgusted with myself. They’d be disgusted with me too.
Then the noises started again. There were definitely creatures moving in the thatch. Bits of straw fell down on me. There were scuttlings that sounded like mice on the floor. Or rats? Might things climb into bed with me? Might creatures fall from the ceiling?
Stop thinking about it. I felt again for the object I prized most in the world, the talisman at my neck. I wondered again about its origins. I felt the familiar and reassuring intricacies of its design. Our family lore had it that it came from the foothills of the Himalayas, and here I was staying in a traditional house only 30 kilometres from where those mountains rise sheer out of the Plains. Perhaps it was that realisation that reminded me of that foreign phrase, cutty budgie hay. It was something my great-grandfather used to say, and it had been adopted into our family vocabulary. He’d been in North India during the war and said that the words had kept him safe. They would keep me safe too.
I thought about gentle monks and holy men. I recalled a naked ascetic I’d seen from the bus. I fell asleep trying not to think about his flaccid ash-covered genitals.

The narrative of this book is very firmly set amongst the sights, smells and sounds of this world and yet there are mentions of Nepali myths and strange beliefs including the magical properties of jackal horns and the precautions that villagers take to keep headless ghosts out of their houses. There are also hints at some of Nepal’s social and ecological problems. There is impatience amongst many children with happy-ever-after tales. This one ends in disaster, or the faint-hearted may choose the gentler ending. The typescript runs to about 47,000 words.

The readership will be children over the age of eight, and the eco-adventure series (of which this is the first), will be of special interest to parents who have travelled adventurously before children or are planning to travel with the family. I see a gap in the market in reality fiction. These are horizon-broadening books showing that life is possible without television and computer games.

“The Editorial Director [of Top That!] loves the stories”

Unique Selling Points

• Author knows the community she describes through having lived in Nepal for six years
• She details the animals accurately, drawing on her zoological training; further supporting information can be added to the text as fact boxes 
• The setting is dramatic Himalayan scenery with its rich sub-tropical wildlife and exotic smells
• An eco-adventure surely captures the ‘green’ mood in the country at present
• The background touches on the realities of slavery and poverty and these social issues are examined sensitively
• The action happens against the stunning scenery of Jane's successful memoir.

The boys manage to find their parents who have set up a base in virgin forest walled in by spiky limestone. The water supply is a subterranean river. They start to help with the zoological fieldwork, but odd things start to happen and radio-tagged endangered animals disappear. The family realise that they are not alone in the massif, and they don’t know who they can trust.

Romping through a series of adventures, the boys manage to foil a gang who have been making money from capturing endangered animals and selling them to exotic pet ‘collectors’ overseas. The narrative is grounded in believable eco-crime. There are also hints at Madagascar’s economic and ecological problems in amongst engaging descriptions of rare wildlife.

Unique Selling Points

• Realism - a transporting antidote to spells and wizards, although villagers' beliefs in spirits of the Ancestors are mentioned
• The author led some of the early exploration of the Ankarana Massif which contributed to it becoming a reserve and achieving proper protection
• The reserve boasts some of the highest densities of primates anywhere in the world. The narrative is grounded on the author’s own zoological researches; she writes authoritatively and entertainingly about endangered species
• The tale is set in a region where poverty, deadly diseases and tribal prejudice are facts of everyday life
• Dervla Murphy described the author’s first book as “the finest travel book thus far written about Madagascar”
• An eco-adventure will capture the First World's ‘green’ conscience.

Cambridge Writers

I've been a member of Cambridge Writers since we returned to Britain from Nepal, and the group has introduced me to many talented writers both published and unpublished. We support each other by offering criticism and feedback at monthly meetings and many members have contributed significantly to the honing and smoothing of several of my books.

One stalwart of Cambridge Writers was Sheila M Stenning-Bennett who left this world after a long fruitful life in 2007. We have just privately published her three books via www.lulu.com. These are her Nigeria memoir Fulani Women, and two novels Freedom (set in Uganda) and An Egg in the Hand. These are available - at no profit to us or Sheila's estate - directly from lulu.com; there are also further details and a tribute to Sheila on the Cambridge Writers website (see links). Copies of the three books have been donated to the Cambridgeshire Library Service. Fulani Women has been deposited with the six copyright libraries so they can be accessed at the British Museum library in London, the libraries of the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Trinity College, Dublin and the national libraries of Scotland and Wales.