A story of human suffering and enduring love
 

Baptist minister and chaplain Paul Allen introduces his debut novel Major Tom the Early Years, which documents life's highs and lows - and asks questions about the foundations of our lives

This novel emerges from 43 years of service as a Baptist minister in various pastorates and chaplaincies, which culminated in being a managing chaplain in a large men’s prison. It is fiction but some of my experiences feature in the novel with names and locations changed. 

Our lives can be coloured by great highs. We celebrate our successes, our birthdays, the annual festivals and our relationships of love.

Our lives can also be coloured by great lows. They sweep through our lives like great storms of wind and rain. We lose the ones we love, and we may lose our job, and we lose our energetic selves as we get older.

The storms will test us but also enable us to grow in strength. 

We can relate to Tom’s experiences of life. He experiences the highs of life, falling in love and marrying Carol, becoming an officer in the Royal Engineers, having a family and success in the world of academia.

He also experiences the great lows of life, when he is critically wounded, ethnic cleansing and the loss of comrades in battle. He is sustained in life through his upbringing in the manse, his formation at school and in the army.

He is sustained by his faith in God and belief in the essential goodness of people. The novel is rather like the parable of the house built on sand, and the house built on rock.  

Major Tom, the Early Years is a story of hopes, dreams and love. It will engage your emotions as it tells of Tom’s encounters with human suffering and enduring love.

Tom Jamieson is born in Keswick the only son of a nurse and a Church of England priest. At eleven years of age, he goes to be a border at an independent school in North Yorkshire called Richmond Hall. The school recognises that Tom has a talent for engineering and Tom completes a Bsc in engineering at The University of Manchester before doing officer training and taking a commission in the Royal Engineers. 

His first posting is the Catterick in North Yorkshire. A few months later he goes on leave to Scarborough in North Yorkshire where he meets Carol, she is a surgeon in Sheffield, and she will become his lifelong partner. He is then posted to Kuwait during the Gulf War where he is critically wounded. Returning to the UK he is rehabilitated; however he is not fully fit for active service and begins his duties in Catterick as an Assistant Padre. 

His romance with Carol has blossomed and they marry honeymooning in Scotland. Soon after their return to Catterick Tom who is now a Captain is deployed to Bosnia as an Assistant Padre. There he encounters the horror of ethnic cleansing. He has to step up to command a platoon whose mission is to help a village that has been devastated by missile attacks. He becomes acting Major Tom Jamieson. 

Returning to the UK it is decided that Tom’s wounds suffered in the Gulf War mean he is unfit for active service. An invitation to give the main speech at his old schools’ speech day is a life changing event for Tom and Carol. Tom is offered a teaching post at the school. Tom develops an engineering workshop teaching the school’s less academic pupils, preparing them for a Btech diploma in engineering and Carol becomes the school doctor. Tom develops a niche as he and his apprentices restore classic cars which they then sell. 

A stray dog called Barny becomes a part of their life and following a caravanning holiday Carol is found to be expecting twin girls. Both Tom and Carol take post graduate certificates in education and shortly after the birth of the twins they become house master and mistress of York House. Tom becomes the Head of RE and Carol the Head of biology. James who was Tom’s sergeant in the Royal Engineers takes over the engineering workshop. 

Tom does not know but he is being groomed to be the school’s second master and ultimately the headmaster. Successive holidays produce pregnancies, so they soon have four children under five! Life in York House is far from straightforward as Tom and Carol have to deal with the emotional ups and downs of teenagers, a 17-year old pupil, becoming pregnant and an adulterous affair between two school staff. 

The sudden death of the second master leads to Tom’s appointment to this senior post. Tom’s army training means that he has the management skills for this appointment which coupled with his gift for teaching RE make him the ideal second master. His rapid ascendency in the world of academia is completed when he becomes the headmaster of Richmond Hall School.  

The story will also engage your intellect with the world in which young people in the 1990s grew up. You may well be left thinking that we have lost the strong sense of community which treads through the book, which is a profound loss.  
 

Paul Allen is a retired Baptist minister, married with two children and four grandchildren. He served in a number of pastorates and his final appointment was Managing Chaplain in a large local prison with HM Prison Service

Buy Major Tom, the Early Years from Paul directly - £10 +p&p via pppc.04pra@gmail.com