The Tack Chest

. . ."but there's something else as well. Grandma had a box at the foot of her bed, which she used as a linen chest. It's a bit tatty; she covered it with a rug, but it looks a bit like the one in your picture. You're welcome to it if you want it; only it had blankets in it, not tack." I had nothing to lose, "Yes please Audrey, if you could hold on to it, I'll pick it up at the weekend." There were more than just blankets in there, much more and so began an odyssey of discovery I couldn't have imagined if I'd tried. Dad had passed away a few years earlier, another victim in a lineage littered with heart attacks, so the hoard I discovered was as mysterious as it was startling. Weapons, loves, scandals and crime. Just how well did I know my father? Fact or fiction? This book became both. Stranger still, this is a book that leaves the reader knowing more than the author.