JILL DAWSON

A revelatory novel about the poet Rupert Brooke from the Orange and Whitbread-shortlisted author of FRED AND EDIE

Tina Humber is 40 and living in the States when a moment of panic about her 10 year-old daughter triggers the memory of her childhood friend, Mandy Baker, who went missing at the same age from the sleepy Cambridgeshire village where they grew up. As Tina replays events and the past comes back to life, she begins to suspect the awful truth of what happened to Mandy. But after so many years, will anyone believe what is based on nothing more than conjecture, intuition and fragments of memory? And even if she is able to placate the ghost of Mandy Baker, there will be profound consequences for the living, including herself.Set against the backdrop of the waterlogged Fens, Jill Dawson's powerful new novel captures the mysteries of childhood, and that volatile transitional stage when girls become aware of their attractions - but do not grasp the dangers.

In post-Revolution France, a child is discovered in the forests near Aveyron, where he seems to have been living wild for seven years. Now 12 years old, the Wild Boy, as he becomes known, is captured, put on public display as a freak, and finally handed over to the ambitious, repressed Doctor Itard, who is charged with studying the Wild Boy, who he names Victor, and trying to discover the secrets of his strange, secret life. But Victor soon becomes a pawn in the raging debate about nature vs nurture, and Itard's attempts to educate and civilise him bear little fruit. Instead, Victor seems drawn to Mme Guerin, his maternal guardian - and to her vivacious daughter, Julie, who is herself falling for Itard as he struggles to understand both Victor and his own confused emotions. Giving a vivid sense of the Revolutionary period, the novel brings to life through the stories of three fascinating characters a mysterious case that still resonates today.