Tom Spicer: A Still Small Voice is an expansive novel which takes the Oliver Twist narrative and reverses it – skilfully transporting readers to a bygone era.
Set against the backdrop of 1920s colonial India are the mysteries that follow little Stephen Crow when he is smuggled from England, by his corrupt uncle Jeremy, into a wealthy Indian household.
Why is he hastily renamed Tom Spicer? And why are his origins, an heir to a vast fortune, hidden from them?
A widow in the native Indian compound lovingly adopts Tom as her own. But the dangers that forced Tom’s removal from England soon catch up with him here, far from his birthplace.
It has been written by DA Swain – the pen name of Vijay Daswani, who died just weeks before the novel’s publication date.
Vijay operated care homes across the North West, including Millfield in Keswick, and lived in the Lake District.
His family hope people will buy, read and enjoy Tom Spicer as a tribute to him.
Prior to publication, Vijay spoke about his inspiration for the book. He said:
Young Tom Spicer is forced to confront adulthood long before his time, in a tale that I hope will capture readers’ imaginations and perhaps relate to their own formative experiences.
The loneliness and fear that a small child can feel – whether through being orphaned, abandoned or abducted – are themes that have resonated with me from an early age.
I was lucky enough to be spared the worst of those dreadful circumstances. But that didn’t prevent the imagined terrors of being alone in a wilderness flirting with me throughout childhood.
Being a young orphan – the most extreme expression of ‘abandonment’ – was mercifully not an experience of mine.
But I did feel abandoned by my parents at the age of nine. First, my dad one day suddenly hurried off down the road from our house in Poona, clutching a solitary suitcase, not looking back or saying goodbye. “Where’s he going?” I confusedly asked my grandmother. “Bombay” (120 miles away), was her one-word reply.
My birth mother followed him down the same road a month later, again with no goodbye, just “Bombay” as granny’s answer.
Then my ‘second mother’ – actually my paternal aunt – set off for Bombay too, a couple of months after that. She did cuddle, kiss me and say goodbye, but I didn’t see her or my birth parents again until I was 11.
Two years of grieving over being abandoned by everyone I loved ended when tight-lipped granny finally took me to to join the rest of the family. Not in Bombay, but London.
Whilst I didn’t endure the horror of abduction, the kidnapping of well-off children was not uncommon in 1960s India, and I remain convinced to this day that I once had a lucky escape.
One afternoon, soon after my parents had emigrated without me, I was walking home alone from school, on a quiet, leafy road in the best part of Poona.
A car, with three men inside, rolled up beside me. A window was wound down, and a man offered me a lift.
“No thanks,” I said, and continued on my way, satchel slung over my shoulder. The car followed slowly, then passed me, then stopped again. “We’ll take you home,” the man said, more firmly. I responded by rushing off across a hedge and fields, where the car couldn’t follow.
Glancing back, I saw the three men get out of the car to stare after me, as if they were calculating whether to give chase. Then they got back in the car and drove off slowly, leaving me visualising them seeking other prey.
Little Tom Spicer is subjected to the ordeals of being orphaned, abandoned and the target of two attempted kidnappings. He also has to affirm his own identity, after a fake one is cruelly thrust upon him.
