A topical and moving novel about family, love, community, the tangled roots of history and searching for a place to call home.
Aisha is a thirteen-year-old refugee living in
London. Happy for the first time since leaving her war-torn home, she is
devastated when her foster mother announces that a new family has been
found for her and she will be moving on. Feeling rejected and abandoned,
Aisha packs her bags and runs away, seeking shelter in the nearby
woods.
Meanwhile, a few doors down, twelve-year-old Zak is
trying to cope with his parents' divorce. Living in a near-building site
while the new house is being refurbished, he feels unsettled and alone.
Discovering a piece of rubble with the original builder's signature set
into it, he starts researching the history behind his home - and in
doing so finds a connection with a young soldier from the past, which
leads him to an old air-raid shelter in the same woods.
Both children, previously unknown to each other,
meet in the heart of the ancient city woodland as they come into the
orbit of Elder, a strange homeless woman who lives amongst the trees -
and, as helicopters hover overhead and newspapers fill with pictures of
the two lost children, unexpected bonds are formed and lives changed
forever . . .