Mother’s Book of tragic loss on Dartmoor

Charlotte Shaw was fourteen when she took part in training for the Ten Tors challenge across Dartmoor, but tragically died after falling into a stream at Walla Brook.

She fell into the water and died while on her way by helicopter to Derriford Hospital, Plymouth in March 2007.

Charlotte’s mother Jennifer Wilkin Shaw has written a book about her daughter’s death and how she coped with the loss.

A decade on from the tragic incident Jennifer said: “I hoped that it would especially help mothers who have lost a child, as well as the fathers and families. I started writing when Charlotte died, all the bits and pieces about the grief. It became compelling. It saved my life. It was an outpouring and it helped me.”

Her husband and Charlotte’s father Jonathan had taken his own life seven years before Charlotte died and she was ‘saturated with grief.’ “I had years of professional help.”

The book ‘Testament of Grief’ is published by Simone Bluestock and costs £9.95.

Hundreds of copies have already been sold and Jennifer Wilkin Shaw is planning a book signing at Waterstones in Newton Abbot later this year.