Books by David E Owen
Historical Fiction
When the Stones Held
A Nation Awakening
Where the Water Flows
When the Music Sang
Where the Mountains Led
The story of William Edwards, a self-taught Welsh stonemason who attempted what many believed impossible: to build a bridge across the River Taff that would survive.
Inspired by a remarkable true story of ambition, failure and determination in eighteenth-century Wales.
When the Stones Held is the first novel in a planned series exploring the people and events that helped shape modern Wales.
The series continues
Writing Developments August 2026
Where the Water Flows: Finding the Story
Work has begun on my next historical novel, Where the Water Flows, although at the moment I am spending almost as much time researching it as writing it. The novel will centre on Dr William Price of Llantrisant, one of the more remarkable characters in Welsh history. Doctor, Chartist, campaigner, druid and an important figure in the history of cremation in Britain, Price was a man who seemed remarkably unwilling to accept that something should be done simply because everyone else had always done it that way. But I don't want to begin with the famous Dr Price already fully formed. As with When the Stones Held, I want to explore the people and places around him, and the changing communities of south Wales that helped create the world in which he lived. That means going backwards before going forwards.
The first few chapters are now written, although I already know that some of them may change as further research arrives. The story currently begins in 1789, eleven years before William Price was born. That date is becoming more interesting the more I discover. One of the surprises has been learning more about William's father, the Rev William Price. He studied at Jesus College, Oxford, where he became a Scholar and later a Fellow. In 1790 he resigned his Fellowship after marrying Mary Edmunds, who had been a servant. That alone raises questions worth exploring in a novel. But the Rev William Price appears to have been a complicated man. Accounts of his later life describe increasingly strange behaviour and violent outbursts, alongside periods when he remained intelligent and lucid enough to teach his children Latin.
What was happening to him around 1789? What was his relationship with Mary? And what was it like for a child to grow up in that household? I don't yet know how much of that will find its way into the finished book. That is one of the pleasures and frustrations of writing historical fiction. You begin with a route in mind, then an archive produces a name, a date or a document that sends you somewhere unexpected.
At the moment I am waiting for one particularly intriguing piece of evidence. The National Library of Wales holds a Price family pedigree compiled around 1865, during Dr William Price's lifetime. They have kindly agreed that a digital copy should be possible, and I am waiting to hear about the arrangements. It may answer some questions about the earlier generations of the family and could influence parts of what I have already written.
Jesus College, Oxford, has also been helping with research into the Rev William Price's years there, and there may eventually be a visit to the college archives to look at the surviving records in more detail. Meanwhile, the fictional world is beginning to develop alongside the history.
The first chapters introduce families whose lives are very different from those of the wealthy landowners around them. An accident brings those worlds together and begins to expose some of the assumptions about class, property and responsibility that people barely thought to question. That part matters to me because I don't want Where the Water Flows simply to become a fictional biography of a famous Welshman. I want ordinary lives to matter too.
There is another character in the story: the landscape itself. When the Stones Held was built around the River Taff and William Edwards' determination to cross it. This time the changing landscape will include canals, industry and the communities growing around them. Water remains important, but instead of being something that must be crossed, it increasingly becomes something that carries people, materials, wealth and change. Hence the working title, Where the Water Flows.
There is a long way to go. Some of what I have written may survive almost unchanged. Some may disappear when another historical document tells me I've got it wrong. At this stage, that's exactly as it should be. For now, the important thing is that the people are beginning to emerge, the research is producing surprises, and the story is underway.
I'll share more as Where the Water Flows develops.
The Owen Stone Series
International espionage. Political corruption. Technology in the wrong hands.
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