Foreshore Signs Exciting Literary Debut From Catherine Jansen-Ridings.

Foreshore has snapped up Catherine Jansen-Ridings’ The Shame Child, a historical, romance novel and the first book of a planned trilogy about the Viking invasions of Ireland from the Celtic women’s point of view.

The Shame Child will debut with the RiverRun imprint of Foreshore in autumn this year.

Ridings is a director, playwright and screenwriter whose work includes the teen drama short film Josh and Lil and plays Astonishing Light, Dark Immortal and Gin Sisters.

The Shame Child is set in a remote Celtic island community haunted by past Viking raids, and tells the story of a young woman grappling with trauma and a fractured relationship with her daughter.

Foreshore publisher-in-chief Phil M. Shirley describes The Shame Child as “a literary début of enormous scale that is thrilling, compulsive and with global appeal”

“While on a pilgrimage to a windswept Irish island, Catherine was fascinated by the presence of Viking graves, and began to delve into her mixed Irish and Scandinavian DNA, imagining an origin story that grew to be The Shame Child.

“The target audience is women everywhere, and readers should brace themselves. The depth and layers and characterisation are extraordinary. The Shame  Child  is without question one of the best debut novels I have ever read and I just know that it is going to become a runaway bestseller.”

Catherine Jansen-Ridings started her career as an actor and began writing plays to perform. Stand-up comedy, street theatre, and children’s TV followed, but she wrote through it all. She raised a family, studying for a Creative Writing degree from Middlesex University and home-educating her children. When the chicks flew the nest, she began writing plays for Chickenshed Theatre and wrote and directed her first short film, Josh & Lil. She lives in North London with her husband of forty years, actor Richard Ridings

Photo c/o Samuel Nicholls@ https://www.theupcoming.co.uk