Grace and charity

Charity Norman left her career as a barrister in the UK and moved to the Hawke's Bay so she could have time to write. Photo / Richard Wood

Up until a couple of weeks ago Charity Norman's dream was to go into a shop and see a copy of her own book up on the shelves for sale. Finally, after years of hard work on her debut novel Freeing Grace (Allen & Unwin, $38.99), that dream came true in Napier booksellers Beattie & Forbes.

"I didn't only see the book on sale," says Norman excitedly. "I saw someone actually buy a copy - the card go through the Eftpos machine, the book go into the bag, everything.

Norman is a petite, 44-year-old former barrister who moved from the UK to the Hawke's Bay with her Kiwi husband and three kids seven years ago. She came here looking for a change of pace, more time to spend with her family, more time to think and write.

"It's what I'd always wanted to do," she explains. "Right from the start if I saw a blank piece of paper I wanted to scribble terrible poetry on it. I used to think I was Emily Bronte. I tried to emulate her in every way."

A vicar's daughter, Norman was raised in a draughty vicarage on the edge of the Yorkshire moors, hence the Bronte fixation. One of seven children, she was born in Uganda before the Idi Amin years, and her family eventually ended up moving to inner-city Birmingham where their house was always open to problem children and parishioners in need. All these elements from her early life, along with her experiences of working in family law, seem to have come together in the mix of Freeing Grace.

It's the tug-of-love story of two families and one baby.

David, a curate, and his Nigerian-born wife Leila are unable to have children of their own. When they are approved to adopt baby Grace it seems the answer to their prayers. But at the eleventh hour Grace's birth family, the Harrisons, decide to make the sacrifices necessary to care for the child themselves.

Norman concedes that the subject of adoption provides a rich vein of material for a novelist. "I think you could write 50 books about it and they would all be very different," she says. "But I never really set out to tackle the issue. Initially I wanted to write about the character of Deborah Harrison, and about the idea of someone who has waited 17 years to get out of her marriage and then finds she can't. As soon as I decided it was the adoption of her granddaughter that was going to drive her back to her family everything fell into place around it."

Freeing Grace is Norman's second attempt at a novel.

It took her 18 months to produce the first draft, working at the kitchen table while the children were at school. Then there was a long period of rewriting as a manuscript assessor, agent and publisher all contributed their opinions on the story. "I rewrote endlessly," says Norman. "Every sentence has about 10 ghosts. But it was good for me. It was a learning process."

Finding her UK-based agent was Norman's first hint of success. She'd sent off her manuscript to a name a friend had recommended and it was quickly plucked from the slush pile.

"Still it almost didn't happen because the agent's email got lost in my spam folder," says Norman. "Luckily I checked and there it was. That was a pretty exciting moment."

Next year Freeing Grace will be published in the UK and France, which has helped Norman feel vindicated at last about her choice to write full-time "Over the years it was often difficult," she admits.

"There were times I felt selfish to be spending my days hunched over my computer; I worried I was wasting my family's time and indulging myself. I remember saying to my husband that I could have done two PhDs or requalified and got another job. All my old colleagues were going on to become judges and silks and there was I still sitting at the kitchen table."

It was the strength of her desire to get published - and an inner belief her work was good enough - that kept Norman going.

"At the same time there was this nagging voice telling me I was rubbish so I had to keep fighting that."

Already she's at work on a second novel - this one about a UK family that emigrates to the Hawke's Bay.

"It's in no way based on my own family," she insists.

"I sincerely hope not anyway, as it has disastrous consequences for them."

With Freeing Grace on bookshop shelves and her literary dream now come true, Norman hasn't quite decided what to wish for next.

"I've been so focused on this - not daring to believe it's real and waiting to wake up - that I haven't really moved on," she admits.