Growing up in post-war London, Rosie and her sister Jo spend their days longing for their grandparents' farm, buried deep in the Hampshire countryside - a green paradise of feasts and freedom where they can roam and dream. But when Rosie is ten years old, everything changes. She and Jo lose their father, their London house, their school, their friends, and - most agonisingly of all - their beloved Nanny, Vera, the only adult to have shown them real love and affection. Briskly dispatched to a freezing boarding school in Hertfordshire, they once again feel like imprisoned castaways. But slowly the teenage Rosie escaped from the cold world of the 1950s, into a place of inspiration and mischief, of loving friendships and dedicated teachers, where a young writer is suddenly ready to be born.