Effigy of the Cloven Hoof, the first book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries, is set in the village of Aust on the English side of the River Severn. I have visited this village many times since 1986 when I first travelled to England to meet surviving family and trace my roots. The picture on the left shows me with my brother, Jim, at the village sign on our first visit to Aust. The parents of our father, Henry Aust, had immigrated to Ohio from the West Country of England. We visited Aust and other towns and villages where family still lived.
With the help of an English friend, we traced back more than 13 generations of my family in England to a man in the 15th century named Ferdinando Aust, an unusual name for an Englishman. The name of Ferdinando is repeated in several later generations along with more typical English names such as Richard and Henry. Is it possible that the first Ferdinando came from Spain or from Flanders in the Spanish Netherlands? Could he have taken his surname by entering England at Aust using the ferry from Wales? These kinds of questions led me to visit Aust over the years when I was stopping in Wiltshire where I still had family resident.
Over twenty years ago, while my husband, Lou, and I were living in Devon, England, I began to draft a fictional mystery story about the medieval Lady Apollonia of Aust. This led eventually to the publication of book one, Effigy of the Cloven Hoof, in 2010. This month I would like to use my postings to talk about various aspects of the village of Aust and some other family locations that play a role in Lady Apollonia’s story.
The location of Aust on the River Severn is important. Future postings will discuss the Aust ferry which operated from Roman times until 1966. I will also describe unique events which occur on the tidal river, such as the Severn Bore, which plays a role in my story. 
There is a historic connection between the 14th century reformer, John Wycliffe, and the church in Aust. Wycliffe would have been a contemporary of my heroine and he appears in Effigy of the Cloven Hoof and some of my later novels.
For more information on Aust, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aust .
Tags: Chaucer's England, historical fiction, medieval mysteries