As ever, the phenomenally productive Kate Saunders has delivered just in time. The Costa prize-winning author’s final novel, published posthumously this month, was rescued from her laptop with all her edits done other than some tiny changes overseen by her sister and publisher. Conscientious to the last, Saunders knew that she was dying with her body of work complete, and she admitted with a laugh from her hospital bed that it was quite a relief that she never had to go through the gruelling process of writing a novel again.
A Drop of Golden Sun is a children’s novel that follows a group of child actors and their guardians as they work on a life-changing film inspired by The Sound of Music. It is one of more than 20 novels Saunders wrote in what was an almost ridiculously multifaceted writing career. Always the chief family breadwinner, Saunders at times resembled a Victorian lady of letters, writing into the night and turning her hand to any form that would pay as she bounced between hack work and prize-winning literature. “I work all the hours that God gives,” she said before she died last year, aged 62.
