I was privileged to be a judge of the first Catherine Cookson Award and this lovely author’s first novel was the winner so I have been following her career with interest. This one, as the title implies, has a girl with a beautiful voice as its heroine, and an incident-filled plot to totally absorb you.
The choice was hers - fame and fortune or true love.
Poppy Mazzini, born in Hull over her father’s grocery shop, lives up to the promise of her fiery red hair and Italian ancestry. Her lovely singing voice and good looks lead her to her great ambition - to go on the stage and see her name top of the bill. She becomes a music hall star both in her native town and in the south, after an appearance in the theatre at Brighton - she even performs in Paris, to tremendous acclaim. But when her first love, an ambitious shoemaker in her home town, becomes engaged to someone else Poppy is devastated. She disappears, believing that she will never return to her life of stardom.
Valerie Wood was born in Yorkshire and now lives in a village near the east coast. She is the author of The Hungry Tide, winner of the Catherine Cookson Prize for Fiction, Annie, Children of the Tide, The Romany Girl, Emily, Going Home, Rosa’s Island, The Doorstep Girls, Far From Home, The Kitchen Maid and The Songbird, all available in Corgi paperback.
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