Set in England over a summer in the aftermath of the second world war, the book follows 16-year-old Robert Appleyard, son of a coal miner, who leaves Durham village to head south and search for any work that isn't coal mining.
Eventually he finds himself in the old smuggling village of Robin Hood's Bay.
It's here he meets Dulcie Piper, a fiercely independent woman, three times his elder, living with her protective German Shepherd named Butler in an unusual cottage.
Seeing Robert from her yard, D.
