Harold Bell checks in with his Liverpool ‘Yew’ crew

Handily included in the opening pages of Harold Bell’s new novel Beyond the Yew is a name-by-name guide to its extensive cast of characters. The majority are rooted in Liverpool, England, in side-by-side row houses with a tall and shady yew tree out front.

Bell’s “you can’t tell the players without a scorecard” entry was the result of comments from readers of this work of historical fiction’s two predecessors: There are so many characters, most of them related, that it was sometimes hard to keep track.

“What I tell them is, if they’re important enough, they’re going to be in the story enough,” the author explains. “So just let it flow, and you’ll remember what you need to.”

Beyond the Yew (St. Petersburg Press) continues the adventures of the “Greenbank Gang,” introduced in Under the Yew (2022) and followed through with last year’s Seeds of the Yew. Nice folks, decent, ordinary folks. Four generation of “friends and family,” the very definition, intermingling in all sorts of ways both personally and professionally. Bell calls it a “running journal.”

Whereas the first book in the series was set in the late 1960s, and the second in 1979, Beyond sets the multi-national gang in 1999, at the dawn of the new millennium. Things are changing, rapidly, in the world and in their lives. Many of the challenges that face them are brand new.

“I thought ‘The original characters have all got toddlers right now,’” Bell recalled. “’So why don’t we just jump ahead a little bit and make them the age that the original characters were when they made this big move to England?’”

As the century is about to turn, members of the families are spreading their wings. Several go to Switzerland, others to the United States. Late in the story arrives the Kosovo Train For Life (a real-life humanitarian mission that delivered supplies to that war-ravaged country in 1999).

New Year’s Eve finds the Eclectibles, the inter-family band (several of them happen to be members of Liverpool’s symphonic orchestra) at Florida’s Big Cypress Seminole Reservation for a multi-day concert by Phish, the popular jam band.

They even get to join Phish onstage.

Bell and his wife Nancy were actually at that century-turning Phish event. “When your first Phish concert is one of their big mega-festivals, it does kind of grab hold of you,” the author chuckles. “I was one of the older persons there, that’s for sure.”

Bell, 72, makes Liverpool, in northern England, a character in and of itself. “I’ve always been a bit of a closet Anglophile, because that’s my heritage,” he admits. “And because of my father’s work, I’ve been all around the world, but I’d never been to any part of Great Britain at all. So when I finally got to go, I was pretty spiked up about it.

“I hadn’t done any research. I don’t know where my family’s from or anything. I just decided to go to Liverpool because I like their football team; I was aware of all their history, with the Beatles and all that stuff.”

He found the people of Liverpool to be “very warm and friendly, with a great sense of humor.

“When I travel someplace as a tourist, I don’t like to get on a tour bus and see three cities in five days,” Bell adds. “I like to park myself someplace and just get to know that area. So that’s what we did, my wife and I. We pretty much walked the streets for 11 or 12 days and talked to people.”

He still reads the daily paper, the Liverpool Echo, online every morning.

The Bells, who recently moved from St. Petersburg to Chattanooga, Tennessee, are seasoned travelers. And some vestige of every place they’ve been, everyone whose path they crossed, winds up in his Yew series.

He writes in a linear fashion, coming up with new ideas as his characters move around and interact. “For example, Gabriel and Jacob go to Switzerland. And my wife’s family’s from there. We’ve spent time in all those places.

“And it wasn’t really until Luke and Daniela got to Kosovo that I thought ‘You know what? I’m going to stick another character in here, a little orphan boy.’”

The Barcants, the McTimons, the Carters, the Pines and the Ardavans “have become real to me. Since I’ve been living with these same characters for five years now, my wife, who reads and edits everything, will say to me when we’re out somewhere ‘That girl there … that looks like Robin to me.’ Or ‘That’s what little Jake would do.’

“I’m worried that when I get even older than am, and starting getting a little ditzy, I’m going to get really confused.’”

Until such time, the saga continues. He’s working on Book Four, to be called Echoes of the Yew. “The difference is that it continues the clan’s story, but each chapter is told from a different perspective,” Bell explains. “So the reader knows who Robin is – where her place is – or Ian, or Liam.”

Beyond the Yew is available on Amazon and via St. Petersburg Press.