Finding happiness - Emma Blair

Sandy McLean is training to be a doctor to follow in his father's footsteps - indeed, to surpass his father who is just a general practitioner: Sandy is to become a top surgeon. Or so his father insists. Sandy feels he has no choice, though knows he is not a natural and life is becoming miserable as he struggles through the exams. What he really wants to be is an artist. Every spare moment he paints and is especially good at people. He even gets a commission when a loyal pub bartender is retiring. And then a French girl, Sophie, offers to pose for him - which leads to his first love affair and the beginning of his rebellion against his father...He has a row with his father and runs off to Montmartre. Meanwhile, left behind is his sister Laura. Her father believes she should wait about idly for a potential husband to turn up. But she wants to earn a living. She tells her parents she's working voluntarily for an orphan centre, but really she has a job working at the Marie Stopes Clinic - and learns a lot about life! When she gets raped on the way home one night, she is understandably seriously traumatised. And decides to follow her brother to Montmartre...

Emma Blair was a pen name for Scottish actor and author Iain Blair, who began writing in his spare time and whose first novel,Where No Man Cries, was published in 1982.

During a writing career spanning three decades he produced some thirty novels, but his true identity remained a secret until 1998 when his novelFlower of Scotlandwas nominated for the RNA Romantic Novel of the Year award.

He was one of Britain's most popular authors and his books among the most borrowed from libraries.
Iain Blair died in July 2011.

An engrossing saga produced by an experienced and popular novelist, so it is unsurprising that it is strong on both characterisation and plot
HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW

A cracking good read.
THE BOOKSELLER