Shadows Over Bellhaven: A Wartime Secret Hidden in an Antique Violin

In 1944, beneath a moonless sky, Amélie boards a fragile boat with a group of children and flees Bellhaven toward an uncertain future. Her desperate escape leaves behind secrets waiting to surface decades later.

In 2018, Lucy is struggling to keep her family’s Kilbracken antique shop afloat while grieving her mother and worrying about her increasingly fragile father. When a distressed stranger arrives with a battered violin, Lucy sees little commercial value in the neglected instrument. Yet the photographs, sheet music, and papers accompanying it suggest a history far more significant than its condition reveals.

Drawn into the violin’s mysterious provenance, Lucy begins following a trail into the Second World War, where loss, courage, and divided loyalties shaped the lives of those caught in the conflict. As wartime experiences emerge alongside Lucy’s present-day search, the instrument becomes a tangible link between families, places, and long-buried memories.

Shadows Over Bellhaven is an atmospheric dual-timeline novel about grief, resilience, family bonds, and the enduring power of objects to preserve stories that history nearly erased.