Sickle Moon

This novel begins with Anthony from Val's previous novel. We never really knew him. He was a child on the periphery of his uncle Charles’ battle with himself and his lifelong disability. Charles had struggled to prove himself a man and took many wrong paths which lead him deeper into the clutches of a malignant Fate, taking others with him. We join Anthony’s life as a teenager. Anthony bears the scars of previous tragedies but does not fully understand what happened and why they have affected his mother’s attitude to him. All he knows it that he lost precious members of his family in close succession and he feels bitterness towards Charles who caused these deaths by his actions. Feeling lost and unloved he attempts to find solace in his own world and to salve the wounds his mother, in her own grief and loneliness unwittingly inflicts on him. It is not until he breaks free from the relentless boredom of his job that he finds true friendship, and this is where the story really begins.