PRIZEWINNING local author Paul Wilson is heading for another success with his latest novel 'Noah, Noah'. A national Sunday newspaper review called it 'exhilarating' and 'brilliant.

The book, based partly on real people and places in East Lancs, chronicles two stories, jumping backwards and forwards between 1930s Blackburn hit by the Depression and a 1990s housing estate in a fictional Rossendale Valley town. In each era, an ordinary man struggles to create something special for the townsfolk in difficult times.

Noah, who runs a community centre in fictional Lowell, looks back to the 1930s for inspiration and remembers the man who made his own childhood special, the amazing and mysterious Mr George, who founded the orphanage where Noah grew up.

Mr George, joiner, philanthropist and part-time conjurer, was the man Noah would like to have been but ,as their twin stories unfold, even his hero proves fallible and Noah decides to do better.

Paul, 38, of Blackburn, said he had partly based Mr George on real-life local legend James Dixon, the Victorian founder of the Blackburn Orphanage in Wilpshire, where Paul once worked. He said: "Like my Mr George, the founder really did turn up in Blackburn, hoping to make his mark." In the book, Mr George also builds Community House, a centre for jobless Blackburn weavers. Paul said: "Community House was a real community venture in the 1930s, set up in an old school house in Audley for mill workers during the depression."

And social worker Noah is also partly based on a real character - Paul himself, who once ran a community centre and now works full-time with adults with learning disabilities for Blackburn with Darwen Council.

He said: "When I was writing it, I got very involved with the characters and their fates. It moved me just as I hope readers will be moved and entertained."

Paul hopes the book will be as successful as his previous prizewinning novel "Do White Whales Sing at the Edge of the World?"

But even if it is, Paul says he will continue to live and work in Blackburn.

'Noah, Noah' is published today by Granta Books at £15.99

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