Jenny Twist

Jenny Twist was born in York and brought up in the West Yorkshire mill town of Heckmondwike, the eldest grandchild of a huge extended family.
She left school at fifteen and went to work in an asbestos factory. After working in various jobs, including bacon-packer and escapologist’s assistant (she was The Lovely Tanya), she returned to full-time education and did a BA in history, at Manchester and post-graduate studies at Oxford.
She stayed in Oxford working as a recruitment consultant for many years and it was there that she met and married her husband, Vic.
In 2001 they retired and moved to Southern Spain where they live with their rather eccentric dogs and cat. Besides writing, she enjoys reading, knitting and attempting to do fiendishly difficult logic puzzles.
In July 2018 she won the Author Show TOP FEMALE AUTHOR Fantasy/Horror/Paranormal/Science Fiction award.

When Angela turns up in a remote Spanish mountain village, she is so tall and so thin and so pale that everyone thinks she is a ghost or a fairy or the dreadful mantequero that comes in the night and sucks the fat from your bones. 
But Domingo knows better. “Soy Angela,” she said to him when they met – “I am an angel.” Only later did he realise that she was telling him her name and by then it was too late and everyone knew her as Domingo’s Angel. 
This is the story of their love affair. But it is also the story of the people of the tiny mountain village – the indomitable Rosalba - shopkeeper, doctor, midwife and wise woman, who makes it her business to know everything that goes on in the village; Guillermo, the mayor, whose delusions of grandeur are rooted in his impoverished childhood; and Salva the Baker, who risked his life and liberty to give bread to the starving children.
The events in this story are based on the real experiences of the people of the White Villages in Southern Spain and their struggle to keep their communities alive through the years of war and the oppression of Franco’s rule. 


Domingo's Angel

She carefully wrapped the dress in tissue paper. Not really seeing it, lost in her memories.


For years life had gone on in the same way and she had come to believe that that was how it would always be.


Then everything seemed to happen at once.


First, her beloved grandmother died. She did it as she had done everything in life, with quiet dignity. She went to bed one night and did not get up in the morning. Don Alfonso came running over to the shop, his face white with shock, his hair uncombed and blowing in the breeze.


"Come! Come quick!" he cried, his voice breaking on the words.


And Rosalba went to her grandmother's room and stood at the end of the bed looking at the beloved figure who had uttered so many words of wisdom and now would never utter anything again. "Go and fetch the priest," she said quietly, and when her father left the room, she sat down at her grandmother's bedside and took her hand for the last time. Then she laid her head on her grandmother's breast and wept.


Chapter 24