The last shot of world war two has been fired and a boy is born, destined for life in a beautiful fishing village in South West Cornwall. He is surrounded, there, by friends and a loving family and his is a childhood that dreams are made of. But in this village they chain up the swings on Sundays, and as he grows, he finds that puberty and its consequences are hushed up and must never be spoken of.This novel is an album of a boy's early years, a mosaic of stories, some funny, some harrowing, that trace his journey from birth to the brink of manhood.

John Kitchen was born and grew up in south Cornwall. His early life is the basis for this novel. Since retiring from teaching to write stories for children, John has published three major books. The first, Nicola's Ghost, won the Writer's Digest Prize for best young adults' novel in 2011, and the NGP Publishing Award in the same year. His second book, A Spectre in the Stones, was published in 2013, and the third, Jax' House, came out in 2016. Fragments of Springtime is his first novel for adults.

John lives in a four-hundred-year-old cottage in Oxfordshire and writes his books in a bright yellow study at the back of the house. He is widowed, but has two wonderful children and four lovely grandchildren.