'Lisa loved the stories about how handsome her Dad was, how his hair licked down low over his face, almost as low as his chin, and how his trousers clung tight and his shirts gleamed white. How all the girls flocked and twirled around him as he stood sideways to the mike, clicking his fingers with a swing to the beat . . .'
Eleven-year-old Lisa loves her mother dearly but lives for the stories of her father who drowned saving someone's life. Her youth is one of fairy tale and fable, cut off from an extended family - a mother and daughter alone against the world.
But the stories that fired Lisa's imagination as a child now obsess her as an adult. Her quest for the father she never knew risks devastating not only her mother, but the very memories Lisa herself depends upon.
The new novel from the critically acclaimed author of 'Miss Harrie Elliot', is a sensitive portrait of Lisa's awakening from the cocoon of childhood to the reality of adulthood, with all its saddening imperfections.