Wren Rows Backwards

About this book

Suffolk, the drought summer of 1976. On the narrow tidal River Lisk, an old rowing ferry joins two hamlets, and passengers on the far bank ring a bell to call it over. Eleven-year-old Wren Pegg draws birds, hates being looked at, and plans to spend the summer being nobody. Then her grandfather, ferryman for fifty-one years, slips on the weedy slipway and breaks his wrist, and the Hythe Estate's new agent sets a condition: run every day and carry three hundred fares by the end of August, or the ferry is finished. Someone has to pull the oars. Wren becomes the ferry girl, one grudging stroke at a time. And every evening a boy from Birmingham rings the bell, rides across, and rides straight back, a different person every time. Who is he, and what is he paying for?