Fifteen years ago today - on 2nd April 2009 - my very first novel The Vanishing of Katharina Linden was published in the UK. It seems incredible to say that - I can't believe so much time has passed! The book was inspired by the real life history, legends and topography of the little town of Bad Münstereifel in Germany, where I and my family had been living since 2001. The locations in the novel are all real ones, and in fact if you want to see them, I did a video walking tour of the town a couple of years after the book came out. You can see it here: YouTube tour
I absolutely loved living in Bad Münstereifel. We originally moved out there for 2 years for my husband's job, but ended up staying for 7, and even so, I cried bitterly when we left. It turned out that our new home in Flanders would inspire three more books, but that's another story...
Anyway, The Vanishing of Katharina Linden is a tribute to one of the places I love best in all the world, and to a large extent it is also a portrait of the place at the time we lived there. Much has changed since. After we had departed for Belgium, the town became a "City Outlet", which no doubt brought in many commercial benefits but also meant that some of the shops and cafés in the book no longer exist. Then in 2021 there was appalling flooding which caused widespread damage in the town. I believe restoration work is still going on. Also, of course, a period of fifteen years brings other changes - it's hard to imagine the young heroine Pia and her sidekick Stefan not having mobile phones if the book were set now. And the dangerous turret in the ruined castle on the hill above the town now has a huge metal cage over it to stop people falling in.
The folk character "Unshockable Hans" who appears in the novel and inspires Pia's investigation is a genuine one. Back when I was writing the book, I came across him in several books written about local Eifel legends, and so I went to the Eifel Club library in Düren and read up about him from very old issues of the Eifel Club newsletter. I recall that in addition to being written in rather old-fashioned German, they were also published in an eye-watering Gothic type which made my progress through them very slow!
The book was - and is - categorised as YA, at least in the UK (in other countries it was sold as an adult title), but I didn't write it with a specifically young adult audience in mind and I know that it has had at least as many adult readers over the years. It went on to be shortlisted for the Cilip Carnegie medal and the Booktrust Teenage prize, and won an ALA Alex award in the USA (Alex awards are given to books written for adults with a special appeal to young adults).
Since the book came out, I have had a further nine novels published, plus one short story collection, with more works in the pipeline. My most recent novels have all been firmly aimed at an adult audience, and set in Scotland, where I have lived for well over a decade. But The Vanishing of Katharina Linden will always have a special place in my heart, and I'll be raising a glass to it this evening.
Below: the US cover
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