The Gravel Road - Ann O'Donnell

This family saga starts with a young South African woman searching for her family origins and history in Britain. While starting work on compiling notes on The Gravel Road, I earnestly began to want to bring back to life those long-forgotten beginnings of an ancestral family, hoping to capture their experiences of surviving under extreme circumstances in their daily lives. At this time, men of different colors and creeds could put aside their grievances, uniting in the determination and will to succeed. I listened to the many stories told by my grandfather Sanderson, which became an integral part in my research. These stretched across old Prussia in Eastern Germany to the old cotton mills in the north of England. The Gravel Road covers 140 years of old and modern history where two exceptional, courageous families, though ethically disparate and living worlds apart, were drawn together and united in peace. In doing so, they paved the way for the next generation. I gathered many hours of notes to write this book in order to write true-to-life characters. My goal was that, in time, it would become a source of wonder and pride for all those who came to befriend them as I did. While reliving those lives, I tried to get an understanding of how some feared the unknown, while others ventured far in the last century, ultimately changing attitudes along the pathways to life.