Kat's tales
my book
The Orchid Papers by Kat Thurston
My first work of fiction, out now !
A divorcing woman discovers the sordid truth beneath her glitzy life when she takes on her cheating husband and the tax haven island hiding his secrets.
On the paradise island of Jersey, society hostess and amateur aviator, Cass Hartmann, has a perfect life. A beachside home, a chalet in the alps, two gorgeous daughters and a to-die-for husband. She has everything, in fact, except for the truth.
At a lavish party hosted by a Russian oligarch, Cass discovers her husband, Magnus, has been leading a double life. She files for divorce and starts unravelling his clandestine business affairs, dreaming of a new life with half the marital spoils. Magnus cuts off her funds, alienates her from friends and family and absconds with their daughters.
Alone, destitute, and with mysterious forces on the island working against her, Cass must find the strength within her. She joins forces with three women she meets in a relationship therapy group to delve into the murky corporate world to uncover an operation of money laundering, sanctions busting and arms dealing. When Cass is offered a vast out of court settlement to keep quiet, she is set on an unexpected path…
about me
Kat Thurston
After the divorce which fueled the events in *The Orchid Papers*, I set my heart on a new life as a bush pilot in Africa following in the footsteps of 1930s aviator Beryl Markham. But then love called me from London to Las Vegas where it burst from the bling and the sparkle and quickly died in the desert dust. I'd clearly learned nothing from my deep reflections about 'the perfect relationship' in this book.
Now starting again at age 60 is scary but not life threatening. I survived a drug overdose as a teenager with an unhealthy infatuation with Sid Vicious, the shock of a breast cancer diagnosis the week I got engaged to the antagonist in my story, a lust for adrenalin sports and a lifelong addiction to escapism, traveling the globe without a plan or a return ticket. And so I will survive the heartbreak of a second failed marriage and the inconvenience of having no pension to draw on and nowhere to call home. Or is that called 'Freedom'?
I remind myself that I was the sort of person who applied to study English Literature at Oxford without a high school education, that I broke a world paragliding record flying up the Atacama coast as a fledgling pilot, then high above the Kalahari desert, rising with dust devils to break a world record (which still stands). When I ended up in a lonely marriage with three young children in a remote Austrian Valley, I started up a business selling horse riding holidays without any experience or skills. That took me from the pyramids of Giza to Machu Picchu, from galloping with elephants in Botswana to playing polo with gauchos in Argentina. I had no clue how to ride a horse.
Somehow, I've made so many of my dreams come true without being aware that they were dreams. I have always believed in life's endless possibilities and somehow I've made them happen. I never imagined, when I began my journey far from home, that one day I would fly off the Great Wall of China, across rainforests in Venezuela, through rainbows at Victoria Falls, or hopscotch in a seaplane across the lakes in Minnesota, or hover in a balloon over the ancient temples in Burma. I have explored the underwater world, hanging out with giant manta rays in Micronesia and exploring WWII wrecks in Irian Jaya. I have had a truly blessed life.
And it all started in my early twenties with a motorcycle adventure around India and Nepal on a motorbike with a man I'd just met at the wrap party of a film I'd been working on, which made my mother smile. Her mother eloped to India with a British army chap she'd met on a ship from New York to Liverpool after a hockey tour. She never disembarked, and if she had, my mother would not have been born, and neither would I. Maybe I wasn't escaping a mundane life for one well-traveled, maybe it was just in my genes.
Yes, it's been an extraordinary ride. I am free of material things and call everywhere I'm welcome my home. I take each moment that I breathe as a gift. A Kat with nine lives, perhaps embarking on my tenth.
On some days, now that I have written my story, it feels like I've come to the end of the line, at the end of an unbelievable journey. But on other days, it feels like I'm starting a new one, experiencing the lull between storms. I have so much to feel grateful for. I have some truly amazing friends, my three beautiful children, and parents who believed in my dreams.