Following the one scrap of information he has, 15-year-old James heads for a rural part of England in hopes of tracking down his birth mother. As James describes his search, readers alone are privy to the stark, compelling second voice of the narrative, that of a girl who found comfort, laughter and respite from a hard and lonely existence in a lively boy's affection, and then makes a desperate, driven effort to affirm her newborn child's life. James's own remarkable, fate-filled journey does not provide him with this knowledge, or all the answers he seeks, but he will learn what he needs to know: he has always been loved. (Ages 12-14)