Little Gold

'Life affirming and triumphant' Mark A. Radcliffe
'Wonderfully moving and atmospheric' Catherine Hall
'Vivid and touching... this book left me haunted long after I put it down' Umi Sinha
'Brilliantly handled... a great first novel' Bethan Roberts
'I found myself engrossed... a vibrant, moving tale' Alison Smith
The heat is oppressive and storms are brewing in Brighton in the summer of 1982. Little Gold, a boyish girl on the brink of adolescence, is struggling with the reality of her broken family and a home descending into chaos. Her only refuge is the tree at the end of her garden.
Into her fractured life steps elderly neighbour, Peggy Baxter. The connection between the two is instant, but just when it seems that Little Gold has found solace, outsiders appear who seek to take advantage of her frail family in the worst way possible. In an era when so much is hard to speak aloud, can Little Gold share enough of her life to avert disaster? And can Peggy Baxter, a woman running out of time and with her own secrets to bear, recognise the danger before it's too late?

Allie Rogers was born and raised in Brighton. Her short fiction has been published in several magazines and anthologies including Bare Fiction, Queer in Brighton and The Salt Anthology of New Writing.
Little Gold, Allie's first novel, will be published by Legend Press in 2017. A librarian at the University of Brighton, she wrote much of it in computer rooms surrounded by students eating crisps rather too noisily.