1944, Liverpool. Marcia is only twelve years old the first time she is sent to the orphanage with her older sister, Cynthia. With their father in a POW camp in Singapore, her mother is struggling to cope and hands them over to the nuns to be 'orphans of the living' - a harsh term for those children with living parents, whose families have abandoned them.
Things look up when their father finally returns and the girls are allowed home but it's clear the years in the camp have taken their toll on the sweet man Marcia barely remembers and the family disintegrates.
Cynthia finds an escape with an aunt and via her ambitions to be a dancer but Marcia is sent back to the orphanage. And while she finds friends among her fellow 'orphans', it's no substitute for the family she so desperately craves . . .
A warm and gritty saga set in Liverpool in the 1940s, from the acclaimed author of Angel of Liverpool.
