The Sea Shell Girl

Seventeen-year-old Merryn Dyer has spent as long as she can remember knitting fishermen's jumpers beside her mother in a small Cornish village. Fair-haired and blue-eyed among dark neighbours, she has never quite belonged, and her mother says only that she takes after her father, a seaman lost before she was born. Money is tight, so when a job comes up at a department store in Plymouth, Merryn takes it, despite her mother's misgivings.

Away from the harbour and the knitting needles, she begins to find threads of a past that has been carefully kept from her, and each discovery loosens a little more of the story she grew up believing. Linda Finlay writes with real affection for Cornish working life, and this is a warm, absorbing saga for anyone who loves family secrets, coastal settings and a heroine finding her own way.