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Description

It's 1945. World War II has just ended and twelve-year-old Rusty comes back home to Britain after being evacuated to the US. The greyness and bleakness of life in England is a shock, but even worse is adapting to the strict discipline of her family, including a brother she's never met, after the warmth and openness of her adopted American family. Rusty is sent to an horrific boarding school, before finally running away as her search for happiness becomes more and more desperate.

About the Author

By the time MICHELLE MAGORIAN was eleven she had decided that the perfect life would be to spend half the year acting and the other half writing. After attending the Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance and Marcel Marceau s L École Internationale de Mime in Paris, she wrote between acting jobs and on Sundays when rehearsing and performing musicals and plays six days and six nights a week (as Mikki Magorian). In her twenties she became interested in children s books and began writing Goodnight Mister Tom - a winner of the Guardian Children s Fiction Prize and the International Reading Association Award. The musical version (composer Gary Carpenter) was a winner at the 1992 Quest Fest for New Musicals at Buxton Opera House. It has been adapted for television by Brian Finch and as a play by David Wood, broadcast as a radio series in Sweden and Norway, and been optioned by Gaumont for television. Michelle has written the book and lyrics for three more musicals and eight other novels, including award-winning Back Home and Just Henry,which won the Costa Award. She has recorded Back Home and A Little Love Song on Audible. Other audiobooks include Just Henry, read by the actor Richard Mitchley; and Goodnight Mister Tom, read by Christopher Saul for the RNIB (full version), and an abridged version read by Patrick Malahide. Michelle has a postgraduate certificate in Film Studies (London University/BFI), was awarded an honorary doctorate by Portsmouth University in 2007 and has been made a fellow by Rose Bruford College.