Alastair Sharp

Ocean House Alastair Sharp

A small Moroccan girl from a large but impoverished family receives a quest from a barefoot holy man on a bridge in Casablanca. Find the Bird with Crooked Wings. Shaafia grows up never forgetting her quest. She journeys to Bordeaux for her studies as a translator and there the quest is fulfilled. A tiny physically handicapped Australian child named Pia is the deeply gifted reincarnation of an ancient Indian sage and it is through Shaafia that she is able to communicate. Around them, in an old French château, gather other souls who have also been given quests. As each encounters Pia, miracles large and small ensue.




However the life of Pia is shortlived and she dies in a pool of blood before the statue of the Virgin in Lourdes in France. This is the story that takes place in the first volume of the Crooked Wings Trilogy. It is not the end of the story. Pia's ability to communicate does not cease with her physical death and those miracles persist in the second volume, Spreading Wings and the château becomes

a site of pilgrimage..




Now, in the third volume of the Crooked Wings trilogy, Shaafia finds herself returning to her native Morocco. She is not the shy, tremulous student she was when she left. She soon discovers that she has acquired many of the gifts that so inspired her in Pia. Shaafia finds herself guided to act on her own. No longer is she only the translator for Pia but other unseen beings guide her.




As she comes to recognise her own powers, so she realises that she can inspire others. Her previously abject family comes to life one by one, she finds herself able to access information she never knew she had. Against her however there are also dark forces. Not everyone wants to see her succeed. As she trusts more and more deeply in her newfound powers, Shaafia rises to face her new challenges and around her others soon recognise what she can do.




The house where all this finally comes to fruition, Ocean House, Darou Al Bahr in Arabic, comes back to life from dereliction and becomes a holy place once again.