The Grass Beyond the Door is a novel based on a true story: Lucy Lightfoot was born in the early 19th Century on the Isle of Wight in the south of England. She was well known in her village for her extreme obsession with the 14th-century crusader Sir Edward Estur, whose carved effigy lay in St. Olave’s Church in the village of Gatscombe. On June 13, 1831, during the severest storm in the history of the Island, a lightning bolt struck the church shortly after Lucy had been observed going inside. Sir Edward’s dagger was shattered, the jewel from its hilt was gone – and there was not a trace to be found of Lucy Lightfoot. For two years her grieving family searched for her, but she had vanished from the face of the earth. Her disappearance became a local legend, a mystery that would never be solved … until 34 years later, when a newly discovered 14th-century manuscript revealed an incredible story.

This is where The Grass Beyond the Door begins.

Cicely Veighey's profile page

Cicely Adams Veighey spent her early childhood in the tiny seaside town of Yarmouth, Isle of Wight. Tales of smuggling, hauntings and magnificently heroic shipwreck rescues – the stuff of local legend – inspired endless games of pirates, Roundheads and Cavaliers, and smugglers and coast guards, played on the beaches, on the commons or, during inclement weather, in the dungeons of Henry VIII’s old castle. She married David Veighey, a Northern Irishman, in 1937. After his discharge from the army in 1948 they emigrated from Ulster to Canada with their three small children and settled in Windsor, Ontario.