The Gazooka Summer

About this book

Until March 1926, Cecily Ashworth was the colliery manager's daughter, with piano lessons and a front pew. Then her father was arrested for embezzling the company's money, and her mother left her 'for a few weeks' with a grandmother she has never been allowed to visit, on Brook Street, four streets and a world below the house they lost. That same night the owners lock the miners out. The whole town starts to go hungry together, and Cecily is the one person everyone has a reason to blame. She speaks no Welsh, can't light a grate, and knows nothing useful except how to sew. But Brook Street is starting a costumed kazoo band, it needs sixty costumes and no one has any cloth. And Cecily is hiding a little red notebook her father begged her to keep safe.