Mark Haysom Libri

The party of the sixties is over and what's left is the hangover. It's 1973 - a time of riots, picket lines and unemployment. But it's also a time when you can imagine the stars. Enter the Bird family...Baxter - the first Bird to go to university. It's fresher's week and a new beginning. Except that his troubled past has followed him right into the lecture hall.Christie - haunted by what's gone before and held back by heartbreak. But with her son succeeding against the odds perhaps now it's her turn to follow her dreams?Truman - an absent father and husband for ten years, he now decides he's owed a second chance. And to help him on his way he's found a golden key that will open every door. Or so he believes.In a story of laughter and tears, Haysom takes us on one family's journey to achieve their dreams. And shows us that, stronger than every lie and secret in every family, is the love that lies within - and the ability to imagine...

1963. The year the Beatles first top the charts. The year Martin Luther King has a dream. The year Truman Bird moves his family from their home in Brighton to a dilapidated caravan in the Ashdown Forest - then disappears. Truman's a charmer, a chancer. He is, inevitably, a liar. He's always got away with it, too. But now he's gone a dangerous step too far and only has one day to put things right - before he loses everything. For Truman's wife, Christie, life has not turned out the way she'd imagined. How has she, that young girl of not that many years ago, ended up like this? In a caravan. With three children. And an absent husband. In this most unique, wise and addictive of British debuts, we discover that life has a habit of getting in the way of dreams - but that people find their own extraordinary ways of bouncing back.