Story Behind The Book
How did I come to write By The Sword? The inspiration came from a house. When I was 11 my grandfather, who lived nearby, took me to visit Harvington Hall near Kidderminster in Worcestershire. Something about the serene, red-brick, medieval, moated manor house captured my imagination and by my teenage years I had renamed it Seven Ways and populated it with a fictional family – the Thorntons. Generations of the Thornton family had exciting adventures written in pencil in spiral bound notepads. Over the years, the notepads were put away and the Thorntons forgotten.
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Reviews
<div>"By The Sword was one of the most moving and powerful books I have read in a very long time. You could actually feel the struggle these two characters had to endure to be together. Alison Stuart really drove home how hard it was for people of that time especially woman to survive. Her book felt so real that I wondered if anyone living today could ever cope with the way life was back then. This book pulls at your heart strings and you hold your breath until the very end praying for these two characters." </div><div>5 CUPS: Coffee Time Romance September 2007</div><br /><div><div>"...I read the prologue and cried like a baby. Yes, on page 3, Alison Stuart had this cynical businesswoman weeping...This is not a comedy. I wept through most of it. Whether it was a touching scene between the hero and the heroine's young son or during the death scenes (including those of children – this is war, after all), the writing and story moved me.</div><div>.</div><div>Yep, sometimes a book is called the best of the best because it is simply that… the best." Enduring Romance Blogspot</div></div>