The Story of the Forest

Description

It's 1913 and a young reckless girl goes out into the forest on the edge of the Baltic sea and meets a gang of rowdy young men with revolution on their minds. It sounds like a fairy tale but it's not the supernatural - the adventure leads to flight, emigration, and the story of a migrant family adapting to a new land, a new language and the pursuit of idealism or happiness. But what is owed to those left behind, trapped in the old lands? From the flour mills of Latvia to Liverpool suburbia to post-war Soho, To Life! follows the lives of those trying to make sense of themselves in a new world, haunted by the memory of what might have been.

Linda Grant is author of four non-fiction books and nine novels. She won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2000. The Clothes on Their Backs was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2008 and went on to win the South Bank Show Award. . Her latest novel, The Story of the Forest, is published in 2023. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and holds honorary doctorates from the University of York and John Moores University.