Roy Merchant

Distorted Lens Roy Merchant

It is 2017 in a quiet upmarket suburb in West Essex. A son waits for his father to arrive for their usual monthly coffee and chocolate morning together.

To kill time, he takes his mind back to growing up in West Essex and the stories he heard as a child and begins to wonder what impact they had on his life.

The book takes us back to 1959 when two people meet and fall in love after being refused a room in Hackney, London. One is Irish, the other is from the Caribbean.

Two mothers have to choose between the family that reared them and the new family and children they are creating in the changing Metropolis called London. Distorted Lens tells their story and the choices they make.

It is a story of, Love, courage, weakness, strength, loyalty and disloyalty seen through the eyes of the father and his son.

In his first novella, Roy Merchant, author of "Walking In The Shadows Of Death", "20 Things I Wish I Knew At 20" and Images (A collection of short stories) immerses the reader in the post-Windrush world and its influences in creating a modern multicultural Britain.