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A bighearted page-turner, set on a remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean, about love, community, and what it means to come home.
Passionate about conservation and fleeing an argument with her mother, newly qualified London vet Charlotte Walker has taken up a fellowship on the tiny South Atlantic island of Tuga de Oro to study the endangered gold coin tortoises in the jungle interior. She can claim the best of reasons for this year in paradise—What better motivation than to save a species?—but the reality is more complex. For Charlotte has secretly come to believe that she has her own connection to this remote and eccentric community, and she is finally determined to solve the mystery that has dominated her life.
But she will have little time for any of her declared or covert investigations. She is inconveniently attracted to the new island doctor. And not only do Tuga's tortoises need attention but so too do the island's dogs, goats, and donkeys—not to mention the islanders themselves, determined to win Charlotte over with cake and homemade jam until she relents and becomes vet to all their animals.
A complete, vivid world unto itself, Welcome to Glorious Tuga is a bewitching combination of warmth and humor. Immersive and uplifting, it transports the reader to an island that time forgot, bringing to life a cast of flawed, loveable people, like a contemporary James Herriot beneath the coconut palms.
"Segal lovingly develops her quirky ensemble cast…Everyone knows each other in this small community, and the character interactions here are delightful." —Shelf Awareness
Welcome to Glorious Tuga will draw you in and demand—with a warm smile—that you embrace island life and stay a while. Francesca Segal's latest asks hard questions about what it means to belong, while charming with an irresistible cast of characters who are deliciously intertwined. A delight from start to finish!" —Shelby Van Pelt, author of Remarkably Bright Creatures
"Francesca Segal's fantastic and exuberant novel, Welcome to Glorious Tuga, asserts that 'small islands are drama factories' and in the case of this book, it's because of the unforgettable characters who populate this tropical setting. Told with such a potent mixture of tenderness and comedy, this is a story you can't forget, a world you won't want to leave." —Kevin Wilson, author of Now Is Not the Time to Panic and Nothing to See Here
"Pure joy in book form, a hilarious, inviting holiday for the spirit." —Naomi Alderman, author of The Future and The Power
This information about Welcome to Glorious Tuga was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Francesca Segal is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, The Innocents (2012) and The Awkward Age (2017), and a memoir of NICU motherhood, Mother Ship (2019). Her writing has won the 2012 Costa First Novel Award, the Sami Rohr Prize, a Betty Trask award, and been longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction.
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