The Sixpenny Orphan

Glenda Young

THE rollercoaster tale of two young orphaned sisters cruelly torn apart after the death of their parents is set to pull at readers’ heartstrings in an emotion-packed tale from one of today’s most exciting new saga writers.

The Sixpenny Orphan is the work of Glenda Young (pictured below) who says that long bike rides along the coast near Sunderland have provided fertile ‘thinking’ territory for her gripping and gritty sagas set in the tough North East mining community. 

This emotionally powerful new story opens in 1909 in Ryhope – a coastal village south of Sunderland where Young grew up and which she puts at the heart of her stories – and unfolds amidst tragic events in a farming community.

‘Please, sir, take us both. We only have each other. We don't know how to live apart.’

After the death of their parents, sisters ten-year-old Poppy and nine-year-old Rose are taken in by widow and local knocker-upper Nellie Harper at her home in an old cow barn. But whilst they have a roof over their heads, the girls are unloved, unwanted, and always hungry, with only one pair of boots between them.

Keen to make money, Nellie hatches a plan to sell the girls to the mysterious Mr Scurrfield. But when the day comes for them to leave, Scurrfield reveals he will take only one of the sisters... and he will decide which it will be on the turn of a sixpence. Ten years later, Poppy is married with three children. Not a day goes by when she doesn’t think about Rose but, after many years of searching, Poppy has accepted that her sister is lost to her. That is until a letter suddenly arrives, revealing Rose’s fate and breaking Poppy’s heart. Determined to be reunited with her beloved sister, Poppy sets out to bring Rose home. Using her local knowledge and her eye for life in a small, close-knit community, Young creates a believable and richly colourful world in this moving and dramatic story full of hardship, struggle and family love, and with a cast of beautifully drawn characters. An unmissable saga...
(Headline, paperback, £7.99)