A letter from Jo about Love From Christmas Tree Farm

Dear Reader,

Hello, and welcome to my world. If you’ve read my books before, you know what to do: pull up a chair and get ready for some armchair travel. If you’re new to my stories, come on in and let me tell you what to expect.

My name is Jo Thomas, and I write feel-good, foodie fiction set in places I hope you will want to call home. As a young adult, I spent time working in a small restaurant in the south of France, and I think this is where my love of food and France comes from. I adored it – the buzz of service and the community of workers when work was done. I fell in love with simple but delicious food: seafood and steaks; barbecued lunches with our toes in the sand by the sea; and one of my favourite meals for a group of friends – mussels in white wine sauce, put on the table for everyone to share, with fresh French bread and bottles of white wine.

My love affair with food and Europe then continued in Italy, where my brother moved and became the owner of a small olive grove. At that point, I still hadn’t worked out that I wanted to write. That came later, after I’d trained and worked as a radio producer at BBC Radio 5, Radio Wales and Radio 2. I left to start a family and decided it was time to begin my writing journey, but it took me a long time to work out what kind of stories I wanted to tell.

One evening, my husband and I went out to dinner at a fish restaurant in Galway. It had rained all day, but as we entered the restaurant, the fire was roaring and the candles were lit; we sat by a window looking out over Galway Bay, and it finally stopped raining. The moon cast a silver shadow across the water. I ordered a platter of oysters, and oh boy, they were delicious– fresh, zingy and a blast of the ocean right there. And I thought, this . . . this is what I want to write about. Those oysters were about to take me by the hand and introduce me to Galway, to its people, its history and community. I didn’t know much about oysters, but I wanted to find out more! And so I did. I learnt about oyster-shucking contests, visited an oyster farm and travelled on the back of a tractor in the sea with my good friend Katie Fforde. What a wet day!

That, I realized, was the key to the stories I wanted to tell. When you discover the food of a place, it takes
you by the hand, catapulting you into a whole new world with the kitchen table at the heart of it, wherever it may be. I wanted to write about food and love. That was my love language.

Since then, I have written about olive oil in southern Italy, honey in Crete, wine in France, chocolate in Switzerland, maple syrup in Canada, pasta, Iberico ham and lavender fields. Each story has been a journey of discovery for me, and I’ve wanted to move to each and every place I’ve written about.

In my twenty-second book, I’m sharing my love of Wales with you. The idea for the setting, a hill-
top Christmas tree farm, came to me years ago when my children were small and the run-up to Christmas was always complete chaos. In between carol concerts and parties, we drove out to a Christmas tree farm one day after school when there was a sprinkling of snow on the ground. The light was fading fast, but the owner welcomed us in and encouraged us to take our time finding the perfect tree. As we explored with torches in our hands, the owner’s golden retriever and her puppy bounding amongst the trees, I felt as if I wanted to linger in that moment: a moment of peace, of calm
amongst the Christmas countdown. I drove home with my three children and our tree packed into the car, the heady scent of pine surrounding us. This, to me, was Christmas– a time for reflection, holiday cheer and gratitude.

Love, memories and new beginnings are all part of Love from Christmas Tree Farm. It’s a book that’s very special to me, and I hope it will find a place in your heart too.

With love,
Jo