West Country Author Antony Johnson launches his latest book – Redemption Time

Antony Johnson, born into an Anglo-Irish family, was educated at Wellington College. He was among the last few to be called up for National Service, serving with the 17th/21st Lancers in Germany. He pursued an eclectic career, starting with spell in the city, followed by ten years in heavy industry, based in Manchester, all the while moonlighting as an amateur steeplechase jockey. Subsequently he became a professional racehorse trainer in Lambourn, sending out winners of races in the UK and France. A spell living in the Caribbean followed where he formed his own travel business. Back in England he took this business to a higher level, visiting close on a hundred countries in each of the world’s continents. This included riding a horse across Argentinian and Chilean Patagonia, a camel across the Tenere Desert in the Sahara and by various methods from St Petersburg to Siberia in Russia including the crossing of the frozen Lake Baikal, twenty-six miles, in a horse drawn sleigh in temperatures of up to minus thirty degrees centigrade. In millennium year he competed and completed the London – Sydney Marathon rally, spaced over thirty-two days through fifteen countries.

Redemption Time is the story of a 16-year-old boy, William Carpenter, from a comfortable, some might say privileged, background who is told by his father one day that the family financial fortunes, having been in decline for a number of years through mismanagement, have now reached bottom. The family home will have to be sold and he will have to leave his public school as his father is no longer able to pay the fees. In other words, they are ‘bust’.

What he does, having delved into the family archives and history, forms the essence of the story taking him, as a deckhand, on a banana boat to the West Indies. There, on the island of Barbados, on a chance meeting on shore leave with a businessman, he discovers that his ancestor of 200 years ago who he knew had spent time there, had been one of the first and most successful sugar plantation instigator and owner. It was this ancestor who had made the family fortune, now dissipated by his heirs and successors. On the island, his ancestor’s name is still a legend.

On the banana boat, his deckhand duties catches the eye of a passenger, a self-made businessman and his wife taking a leisurely cruise as part of a recovery programme from a heart attack. He mentions to Will to contact him should he ever feel in need of a change or advice in the future. After more voyages on the ship, Will decides that the time to change has come and contacts his man, Mr Mallory. The offshoot is that Mallory offers him a job but that is all. The rest, he says “Is up to you”

Will’s progress up the ladder to assistant manager of one of the leading branches of the firm, to, a couple of years later, to be appointed to start up a new branch of the business in Ireland, follows.

What happens in Ireland – the ups, downs and pitfalls of starting a new business, together with his childhood knowledge and skill of riding a horse, stands him in good stead with the locals and takes his love life to a new level.

The prospect of a return to his Caribbean Island, Barbados dawns. What happens if the dream turns into reality or not forms the ultimate climax as to whether his original decision to take the job as a deckhand was a good or bad idea.

Previous publications include East into The Sun, A Crack of the Whip and many travel related magazine articles.

Antony has three sons, Richard, Simon and Sam. His daughter, Jemima, a leading Three-Day Event rider, was killed in a riding accident.