Cedar Fort – Sweet Water Book – 2026
BACK COVER: Helen Clarke’s eight-year-old daughter Peggy had contracted a disease that was all but a death sentence to children in 1928 London. Single, homeless, and penniless, Helen tried to treat Peggy on her own, but her daughter rapidly deteriorated. In desperation, Helen seeks help at St. Mary’s Hospital where she meets August Gardner, a young doctor who’s approach to healing often clashes with conventional medical wisdom of the day. Focused on saving her only child, Helen finds herself in turmoil, having had premonitions about Peggy’s important future verses the dire state her daughter now clings to. Had Helen’s premonitions been a lie? Was Peggy’s future simply wishful thinking on her part? Would her daughter even live to see the next day, let alone a predestined future?
As Helen and August struggle to find a cure for a typically incurable disease, their association quickly grows into more than a friendship. But the last thing on Helen’s mind is a romantic relationship. In addition to keeping Peggy alive one more day, she must now navigate a future she’d never thought possible. And yet, as desirous as that future sounded, if it didn’t include her precious daughter, was it one worth living?
REVIEWS:
A desperately ill child, a determined mother, an incurable disease and a doctor willing to do what is necessary to bring about a cure. “Premonitions” is a medical thriller that explains the life and death struggle to solve a scourge of infectious disease. A Gregg Luke masterclass in conflict and resolution. –Jerry Borrowman, award winning historical fiction author.
Set in the world of early-20th-century medicine, this compelling romance is for anyone who loves history, physical and emotional healing, and the breakthroughs that transform both. –Julie Wright, award-winning romance author.
AUTHOR NOTES: This book was a pure joy to write, mostly because of the research required and what I discovered about British medical practices in the early 1900s. I am so glad I was born back then. Medicine was still very much at its infancy, even there had been centuries of physicians before. Concepts like germ theory were still burgeoning, antibiotics had yet to be discovered, and hospitals were still thought of a place to go to die, not be healed. And yet, many ideas, studies, and successes in the field of medicine, nutrition, herbology, and holistic practices were available back then. The protagonist, Helen Clarke, is a woman who has endured unbearable hard-knocks in life, the current one being her daughter, Peggy, contacting a disease considered a death sentence because there was no known cure. But she doesn’t accept that conclusion because she’s had many premonitions about the importance Peggy will play to the world in the near future.
This book is the first in a historical fiction trilogy about the development of the world’s first antibiotic.