How to Heal Scars, Book 1
by Rowen Sivertsen
Rick, Jen and JJ meet as 17-year-olds at a Turnabout Farm. They are all, for very different reasons, deeply scarred both mentally and physically by their previous lives. At the farm, they learn to recognise and tackle the aftermaths of their own and each other’s traumas. Together, in defiance of the prejudices that surround them, they build a thriving but unorthodox community in an ancient and crumbling building. They create a life full of adventure and challenges, supporting each other as they build their separate careers and work towards the fulfilment of their dreams.
But their success is continuously threatened by the repercussions of their earlier lives. When they try to reach out to Rick’s dysfunctional family the result is catastrophic, and when Rick’s father manages to trace his son, and threatens to destroy everything they have built, Jen has to take desperate measures that conflict with the moral convictions of her closest friends and the family she has created around her — measures that have horrific and far-reaching consequences..

How to Heal Scars, Book 2
by Rowen Sivertsen
Jen, Rick and transgender JJ have survived from their teenage years by invading each other’s spaces, dragging each other’s shadows into the light, crashing each other’s barriers and standing between each other and red flags. “Not the usual run-of-the-mill friendship,” as Rick says, but a friendship that allowed each of them to overcome the traumas of their childhoods, and pursue their separate careers. Against all odds, they have built a strong, caring and enduring community, taking in “turnabout” teenagers from backgrounds of abuse, incest and gender confusion, similar to their own origins.
But the scars from their past are still present and continue to haunt them in strange and unexpected ways. They strive to give their children a nurturing environment in the face of their own traumas and the prejudice of others, and they win the hearts and minds of many along their way. Their friendship is challenged when a new “dark angel” (their name for psychopaths) enters their lives. They are faced with murder and betrayal. Help comes from unexpected places, and once again they must stand together to forge a new path to survival.

Jen has been bullied and socially ostracised from the day she started at her first school. Sent away to boarding school at the age of eight by parents who were themselves damaged by the war and emotionally deprived, she repeatedly tried to run away, but was returned to the school each time without comment, until the day she finally came to the doorstep of the Friends' meeting house and was given a chance for a new life at the Turnabout Farm.

Rick has scars all over his body that witness the horrific violence perpetrated on him by his psychopathic father. Rick's traumas have left him with dissociative identity disorder, but a determination to create a life for himself that is the complete antitheses of his father's life. The knife-slash that destroyed his face at the age of thirteen sent him running for his life from his father. He spent the next years hiding, and living on the streets until a Red Cross worker won his confidence, and facilitated contact with the Friends and their Turnabout Programme.

JJ describes herself as a "woman trapped in a man's body". Against all odds, in a society that regarded transgenderism as a social contstruction, in the face of anger and opposition from her family and of random violence from people provoked by her appearance, she remained true to her own identity. But she was frightened, alone and isolated until the day the Friends took her into their care, and gave her a home at the Turnabout Farm.

Alan comes into the story later, after the trio have left the Turnabout Farm and the good people there that have trained and helped them on their way. Alan, studying conservation and renovation of medieval buildings and furnishings, finds himself attracted both to the crumbling ancient house they live in and to their way of life, and gradually moves in. He has nothing approaching the traumatic backgrounds of the others, but it is precisely what JJ terms as his "stringent normality", and his pragmatic approach to the drama that the others generate, that makes him their mainstay and the rock on which the others begin to rely.

Jen, Rick and JJ came to Ormcairn to help the elderly couple living there in their failing effort to halt the decay of their ancient stately home. They stayed and were later joined by Alan. Renovating the building and its outhouses progressed very slowly, but together with the elderly couple, they managed to forge a community where they could each live out their dreams in the amazing environment they gradually created around themselves. Ormcairn became the centre of a community that attracted many unusual and talented people, it became a family centre, a small holding, and much more.