Thank God, I am a risk-taker. My diary is evidence. I wanted adventure. Perhaps romance. I needed to prove that, at forty, I was not too old to find romance. My instinct told me that the time was right. I went to Turkey in mid-1993 and found both adventure and love. I also predicted that my diary of my year in Turkey would form the basis for a romantic novel. It has done so.

In this novel based on my diary, I am Kate, a forty-year-old teacher and loving, single mother of four sons. I have been with my Australian school for twenty years, and now I feel it is time for a break from my responsibilities as a parent. It’s time to welcome new adventures and, hopefully, romance. I jump at an offer to take a year’s leave from my school and teach in Istanbul.

My diary shows how I live life to the full. As I write this novel, I can read the sequence of events that led to perhaps the most romantic, challenging, exciting, scary times in my life. And I can be eternally grateful that I did jump in and face life. At the start of my year in Turkey, two handsome, well-educated men became potential romantic interests. And then, unexpectedly, a third man came into my life.

Patricia Bradley

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