The Swansea Camel – A Swansea Nativity

Oct82021

The Swansea Camel in and around Townhill, Swansea in more modern times The Phoenix rises in Townhill but:

It is Christmas Eve 1880 and Melchior, the camel from the travelling menagerie, has gone missing. It is Inspector Rumsey Bucke’s job to find it, but his investigations are disrupted by a series of peculiar events. Strange forces appear to be at work in the town.

Why is Frankie Starr being pursued by the three King brothers? Who has been stealing sheep on Townhill? What should they do about Nick the Holly? Who gave Gabriel those bagpipes? And is it true that in the chapel where Christmas Evans, Swansea’s one-eyed preacher lies buried, a young lonely woman is about to give birth?

But of course, what is the answer to the most important question of all? Who was in one of those ships that came sailing into Swansea on (almost) Christmas Day in the morning?

The book is 76 pages long and full of a riotous Christmas – Three Kings, flock-watching, old men gathering winter fuel, angels, holly, ivy, donkeys, sheep, a baby, Father Christmas, three ships, Mary, Joseph and a mass fight between two gangs. Oh yes, and the Swansea Camel.

The Swansea Camel is a novella running alongside the two previous Rumsey Bucke novels ‘In Knives we Trust’ with its sequel ‘Our Lady of Mumbles’.

STOP PRESS there is another Rumsey Bucke novel being published at the end of October ‘A Swansea Child’.

The author Geoff Brookes married a Swansea girl and has lived there for the last forty years. Initially head of English in Dillwyn Llewelyn Community School and then moved to Cefn Hengoed Community School in 1991 as Deputy Head teacher. His knowledge of the history of Swansea is encyclopaedic which finds its way into so much of his writing.

The Swansea Camel was published in paperback by Amazon in October 2021.