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After Evergreen
Frances Clegg now a mature woman, matriarch of the ever expanding Clegg clan would direct the family through the many crisis’s endured by them. With the help of her fortune, the hard-nosed culture earned in her youth and her early life contacts, she had developed Beck End into a business large enough to employ the whole family and more. Billy an itinerant worker later to become a valued employee caused a rift when he fell for a newly appointed manager at a critical time in developing the company. This led to his departure, together with a disabled partner and the organisation of an international jazz festival, ended the farming life for Fran and her husband. With the next generation ready to take over it was the best time to bow out.
Kindle Edition
First published December 3, 2013
About the author
Sybil Powell
18 books42 followersI’m Sybil Powell, wife, mother, friend, entrepreneur, traveler and now an author of books which reflect many of those life experiences.
I spent most of my childhood in a seaside resort town on the south coast of my native England. Eastbourne was a wonderful place to grow up, but sheltered just enough to make me want to go out and spread my wings and see what the rest of the world had to offer! That adventure started after I married a wonderful, young serviceman. After settling into life in the forces, we moved to Germany where we lived for a couple of years. On returning to England and civilian life, we settled in the north where I found work in the more heavily industrialized world of Yorkshire. Very different from the life I had known in a seaside resort!
I loved living in and learning about the lifestyles in different parts of England, but my education really expanded when we moved half the world away to Saudi Arabia. The contrast between the coastal mountain areas and the inland, desert cities along with the rich culture and traditions going back literally thousands of years, is something which has affected my life and my writing ever since.
Eventually we bid ‘Adieu’ to those exotic, arid lands and returned to the UK. Back home again, I started my own business—a secretarial agency which provided companies with the then-fledgling service of a virtual assistant.
We’ve now moved again and this time to Wales, where I’ve settled into my writing career, and very happily draw on my many experiences both at home and abroad. Because those experiences have been so diverse, my books tend to be very different from each other and stand on their own- in plot, characters, culture and background.
I spent most of my childhood in a seaside resort town on the south coast of my native England. Eastbourne was a wonderful place to grow up, but sheltered just enough to make me want to go out and spread my wings and see what the rest of the world had to offer! That adventure started after I married a wonderful, young serviceman. After settling into life in the forces, we moved to Germany where we lived for a couple of years. On returning to England and civilian life, we settled in the north where I found work in the more heavily industrialized world of Yorkshire. Very different from the life I had known in a seaside resort!
I loved living in and learning about the lifestyles in different parts of England, but my education really expanded when we moved half the world away to Saudi Arabia. The contrast between the coastal mountain areas and the inland, desert cities along with the rich culture and traditions going back literally thousands of years, is something which has affected my life and my writing ever since.
Eventually we bid ‘Adieu’ to those exotic, arid lands and returned to the UK. Back home again, I started my own business—a secretarial agency which provided companies with the then-fledgling service of a virtual assistant.
We’ve now moved again and this time to Wales, where I’ve settled into my writing career, and very happily draw on my many experiences both at home and abroad. Because those experiences have been so diverse, my books tend to be very different from each other and stand on their own- in plot, characters, culture and background.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 1, 2025
The final book in the evergreen trilogy is a wrap up of Fran Clegg’s (Grainger’s) life. Now the Matriarch of the Family Fran has to steer her family through the trials and tribulations of the ever-expanding farm and Clegg clan. With her past colliding with her present, Fran uses her know how, money, and friends to bring a Jazz festival and expanding farm/horticultural/ dairy/ ice cream etc. to an empire. With some events ending the ideas and partnership, the next generation of Clegg’s steps in and takes on what Fran had fought so hard for.
Fran has always been my favorite in all three books and her take all attitude in the first book, to the farmer’s wife in the second, to the matriarch in the third, Fran is the women of the hour. Her family and friends are a wide variety and help develop who she is and how she ran things. Through all the hard ship she went through Fran was the ultimate example. I loved how she went into the barn and saw Samuel and was nostalgic thinking of Stanley. Very heart warming. It took me a while to get used to the style of the books and the way they thought things were and how they compared to modern times. Very weird.
I didn’t like how the past would pop up and because it was from a different book it ended up backtracking and reliving a scene.
This book is good for YA and up. It’s a very unique romance which shows how different relationships develop and how all people have a choice in life. No steamy scenes but mention of sex and pregnancy.
Till next time ~ Sweets Books
(written by Beth - Sweets Books After Hours)
Fran has always been my favorite in all three books and her take all attitude in the first book, to the farmer’s wife in the second, to the matriarch in the third, Fran is the women of the hour. Her family and friends are a wide variety and help develop who she is and how she ran things. Through all the hard ship she went through Fran was the ultimate example. I loved how she went into the barn and saw Samuel and was nostalgic thinking of Stanley. Very heart warming. It took me a while to get used to the style of the books and the way they thought things were and how they compared to modern times. Very weird.
I didn’t like how the past would pop up and because it was from a different book it ended up backtracking and reliving a scene.
This book is good for YA and up. It’s a very unique romance which shows how different relationships develop and how all people have a choice in life. No steamy scenes but mention of sex and pregnancy.
Till next time ~ Sweets Books
(written by Beth - Sweets Books After Hours)
February 14, 2014
4 cupcakes
This book was gifted to me by Sweets Books and Sybil Powell.
The final book in the evergreen trilogy is a wrap up of Fran Clegg’s (Grainger’s) life. Now the Matriarch of the Family Fran has to steer her family through the trials and tribulations of the ever expanding farm and Clegg clan. With her past colliding with her present, Fran uses her know how, money, and friends to bring a Jazz festival and expanding farm/horticultural/ dairy/ ice cream etc. to an empire. With some events ending the ideas and partnership, the next generation of Clegg’s steps in and takes on what Fran had fought so hard for.
Fran has always been my favorite in all three books and her take all attitude in the first book, to the farmer’s wife in the second, to the matriarch in the third, Fran is the women of the hour. Her family and friends are a wide variety and help develop who she is and how she ran things. Through all the hard ship she went through Fran was the ultimate example. I loved how she went into the barn and saw Samuel and was nostalgic thinking of Stanley. Very heart warming. It took me a while to get used to the style of the books and the way they thought things were and how they compared to modern times. Very weird.
I didn’t like how the past would pop up and because it was from a different book it ended up backtracking and reliving a scene.
This book is good for YA and up. It’s a very unique romance which shows how different relationships develop and how all people have a choice in life. No steamy scenes but mention of sex and pregnancy.
This book was gifted to me by Sweets Books and Sybil Powell.
The final book in the evergreen trilogy is a wrap up of Fran Clegg’s (Grainger’s) life. Now the Matriarch of the Family Fran has to steer her family through the trials and tribulations of the ever expanding farm and Clegg clan. With her past colliding with her present, Fran uses her know how, money, and friends to bring a Jazz festival and expanding farm/horticultural/ dairy/ ice cream etc. to an empire. With some events ending the ideas and partnership, the next generation of Clegg’s steps in and takes on what Fran had fought so hard for.
Fran has always been my favorite in all three books and her take all attitude in the first book, to the farmer’s wife in the second, to the matriarch in the third, Fran is the women of the hour. Her family and friends are a wide variety and help develop who she is and how she ran things. Through all the hard ship she went through Fran was the ultimate example. I loved how she went into the barn and saw Samuel and was nostalgic thinking of Stanley. Very heart warming. It took me a while to get used to the style of the books and the way they thought things were and how they compared to modern times. Very weird.
I didn’t like how the past would pop up and because it was from a different book it ended up backtracking and reliving a scene.
This book is good for YA and up. It’s a very unique romance which shows how different relationships develop and how all people have a choice in life. No steamy scenes but mention of sex and pregnancy.
December 5, 2013
It is always difficult reviewing one's own books but this one was easy to write as it led directly on from the two previous books written in this series. It deals with the expansion of the farm which the mature Francis Clegg (nee Grainger) and her wider family develop and the challenges they face from her son's infatuation with an international model to the destruction of their prize herd with Bovine TB and the recoveries they made both individually and as a family. It covers the deaths of her in laws, the stresses and interplay of staff and nature placed on them, eventually leading to her retirement to support of her husband's illness. It becomes a wider story of the family as they become absorbed into the ever increasing demands of the farm business leading to the next generation's take over.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews