Changes

Tom Sparrow finally does what he's always dreamt of: buying the former Ridley house near his old childhood home. As Tom explores he finds his new house isn't the only link with his past. There's something in the outhouse that takes him back to the days of young love and Susan, the Ridley's daughter. She had been raised in her parents' prohibitive faith as a Gilead Jehovah's Witness which didn't seem a problem to them but they were young and experience wasn't on their side…

As outlined in his non-fiction study ''Counting the Days to Armageddon'' Robert was raised a Jehovah's Witness. Therefore as we read about Susan and her bid to escape her family's sectish fundamentalist beliefs, we realise that it's based on actual experience. In the novel the religious world of the Gileads (a specific evangelising wing of the Jehovah's Witnesses) links the fictitious world of Tom and Susan to battles that are being fought in reality.