I am taking a break from writing about my own history and have just completed my first novel, based on the early life of my maternal grandmother. She was a survivor too, not of childhood abuse, but domestic abuse.
Once a common term across the British Isles, a cunning woman - or swynwraig in Welsh, was a healer, herbalist, and keeper of folk wisdom. Feared by some, sought out by many, she stood at the edge of village life, carrying traditional knowledge through woodlands and whispers, between intuition and inheritance, survival and story. From the misty hills of Gwernogle, West Wales to the candlelit ballrooms of Gloucester, Hettie Morgan walked a path shaped by grace, craft, quiet defiance, and, in her own quiet way, radical love. Inspired by the diaries, oral traditions, and family history of **Hettie Elizabeth Howells ** - cousin to the renowned Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, this partially fictionalised account brings to life a woman whose story has never before been told. Hettie was also mentioned, alongside a photograph of her with her husband and daughter Valerie, in Dylan Remembered, Volume Two: 1935–1953 by David N Thomas, (Seren Books). A daughter of several generations of wise women, Hettie brewed tinctures, crafted herbal remedies, and lived the old ways without fanfare. Taught by her mother in hedgerows and kitchens, she became a healer and a fierce protector of her kin, all while the world around her changed in ways both brutal and beautiful. In a time and place where same-sex love was hidden behind closed curtains, Hettie forged bonds that defied convention. Her story is one of chosen family, deep intimacy, and enduring tenderness in the face of silence. The Times and Trials of Hettie Morgan is a lyrical, historical novel rooted in memory, celebrating resilience, identity, loss, and the quiet strength of women who followed their own truth. A tale for anyone who believes that courage can be quiet, love can take many forms, and legacy lives not in monuments, but in memory.
The book will be released before an accompanying soundtrack (late September), some songs based on her own poems and lyrics the rest by me. That album is entitled "Woman of the Wild".
