Blog Tour – 21 Miles by Nicola Garrard | Much To Do About Writing

Today is my stop on the 21 Miles by Nicola Garrard book tour. My stop on the blog tour takes the form of a book review.

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Title: 21 Miles

Written by: Nicola Garrard

Cover Designed by: James Nunn

Cover Illustration by: Olivia Anthony

Published by: Hoperoad Publishing

Gritty realism is not the usual type of book I read. I am more of a fantasy sci-fi fan, but 21 Miles is a compelling read and I would highly recommend it. This is the type of book that once you start it is hard to put down not only because of the vivid characters that jump off the page but because you do not want to leave the main protagonist Donald (Donnie) Sampson alone in case he gets hurt again.

Rather than a sequel 21 Miles is another harrowing chapter in Donny’s life. Nicola Garrard’s first book was about the beginning of his life in foster care when he was fifteen and doing work experience on the Union Canal. Donny learns the network goes through 29 locks so ‘borrows’ a canal boat to go back to Hackney to meet his mum who is due to be released from prison for drug offences.

The second book, 21 Miles, jumps to when he is 18 and is just as insightful, thought-provoking and emotionally powerful as the first.

Donny is still in foster care in Hertfordshire and compared to his life before where he was caught up in a London gang he has hit the jackpot. He has a caring, loving foster mum and is doing extremely well at school and about to apply to universities to study History. Life is great that is until he is persuaded by his friend, Zoe, to go on a day trip twenty-one miles over the English Channel to Calais so she can practice her French and he can learn about the French-British History for his exam.

In Calais Donny is tricked into giving away his passport, arrested by racist French police as a ‘migrant’ and escapes to join a group of teenage refugees living rough in the dunes east of Calais.

With hints of the Windrush Scandal where in 2018 people were wrongly detained, denied legal rights, threatened with deportation, and in at least 83 cases the UK Home Office wrongly deported them; 21 Miles is an exciting contemporary adventure that will have readers turning the pages until it finally leaves you with a sense of hope despite the bitter adversity and injustice he has witnessed and lived through.

Advertised as suitable as a PSHE/English classroom resource and for discussions around Black History Month.

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Nicola Garrard has taught English in secondary schools for twenty-three years, including fifteen years at an Islington comprehensive. Her first novel, 29 Locks, was shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize and the Mslexia Children’s Novel competition, and longlisted for the Branford Boase Award 2022 and the Berkshire Book Award. It was picked by Suzi Feay in the Financial Times as one of their ‘Best Books of 2021’. This is her second book.

Nicola Garrard said:

“In 2014 I read a news article about the suffering of separated child refuges in Calais, just 21 miles from our coast. I started to collect donations of food and clothing with the help of other parents. I filled my small campervan and took these essentials to Calais a number of times. There, I volunteered with a grassroots French refugee charity. On one occasion, I met a small thirteen-year-old Eritrean girl in Calais who begged me to take her to England where she had family. Fearing for her safely, I desperately wanted to help. But I didn’t agree to take her. People-smuggling is against the law: I might have lost my career, been fined, and sent to prison. It was the right decision. But after we lost touch, I was left with the ‘what if’ of her request.

Since 29 LOCKS was published, readers often ask me what happens next to Donny. He remains so alive for me, and so I decided to connect these two stories of dislocation and separation, and ask myself what can we learn from teenagers? The result is 21 MILES.”
Nicola Garrard talking about her inspiration for 21 Miles

She has appeared at the Hay Festival of Literature and Arts, Chichester Festival and Petworth Festival Literary Week and on BBC Radio London. She gives regular talks for schools, libraries and colleges (including for World Book Day), as well as prisons. Her words and poetry have been published in The Frogmore Papers magazine, IRON Press Publishing, Mslexia magazine, The Guardian and the Writers & Artists Yearbook Guide to Getting Published, and by the Poetry Book Society. Nicola lives in West Sussex with her wife, three children and a Jack Russell terrier called Little Bear. Her family is typical of modern Britain, with roots in England, Scotland, Hungary and Trinidad.

She currently works at Minority Matters, a charity which aims to empower young people from isolated communities through engagement projects, and is also an active supporter of the Trussell Trust.

For more information see www.nicola-garrard.co.uk or follow @nmgarrard on X, formerly Twitter.

To follow the rest of the tour please see the schedule below: