Three women arrive in Girona, North East Spain, to attend a New Age workshop based on the mysteries of that ancient city. They have never met before.

What do they have in common? They discover that they are all grandmothers who know little about psychic or spiritual worlds.

What do they want? To keep a good face on things; ‘things’ being quite a lot of difficult issues... What do they really want? Life change? Reclaiming their dreams?

What do they get? The Holy Grail. And all they were looking for was a way out of sudden old age...

Following her classic Girona trilogy – The City of Secrets, The Portal and The Stone Cradle – Patrice Chaplin returns to the enchanted city for a new adventure. Many decades have passed since, as a teenage traveller seeking a Bohemian lifestyle, she stepped across the threshold of the iron bridge and into the hallowed old city. Now in her later years, she finds herself unexpectedly with two other women of a certain age. In the midst of changing lives, they are each seeking freedom, meaning and truth. What they encounter initially is confusion, chaos and misunderstanding. But will they discover the thing that can reconcile themselves to each other, to their lives and to themselves?

PATRICE CHAPLIN is an internationally renowned author and playwright who has published more than two dozen books. Her most notable works include Albany Park, Siesta (which was made into a film starring Jodi Foster and Isabella Rossellini), Into the Darkness Laughing, Hidden Star, Night Fishing and Death Trap. Her stage play From the Balcony was commissioned by London’s National Theatre in conjunction with Radio 3. As a Bohemian in Paris during the 50s and 60s, Patrice spent time with Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Married to Charlie Chaplin’s son, Michael, and living and working in Hollywood, she was friends with everyone from Lauren Bacall and Miles Davis, to Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau, who gave her a starring role in one of his films.

In her books City of Secrets (2007), The Portal (2010) and The Stone Cradle (2017) Patrice opened the door to entirely new and compelling elements of the Rennes-le-Château mystery involving the mysterious Catalan capital of Girona. She continues the discovery of hidden secrets in The Unknown Pursuit.
Patrice is the director of The Bridge, a non-profit organization that leads workshops based in the performing arts as a new and unique way to help fight addiction. She resides in North London.