From the author of The Gustav Sonata At the age of six, Mary Ward, the child of a poor farming family in Suffolk, has a revelation: she isn't Mary, she's a boy. So begins Mary's heroic struggle to change gender, while around her others also strive to find a place of safety and fulfilment in a savage and confusing world. Over a million Rose Tremain books sold `A writer of exceptional talent ... Tremain is a writer who understands every emotion' Independent I `There are few writers out there with the dexterity or emotional intelligence to rival that of the great Rose Tremain' Irish Times `Tremain has the painterly genius of an Old Master, and she uses it to stunning effect' The Times `Rose Tremain is one of the very finest British novelists' Salman Rushdie `Tremain is a writer of exemplary vision and particularity. The fictional world is rendered with extraordinary vividness' Marcel Theroux, Guardian