Wild Ground

Neef has always been a storyteller and her story now, working in a cafe in London, is that her name is Jennifer. Jennifer never knew a boy called Danny, never loved him, never had him wrenched away from her. As a child, it was always Neef and her mother, Chrissy - troubled, beautiful, at the mercy of addiction and a succession of bad boyfriends. But when Neef becomes a teenager, and the pair move into a flat above a pub with Chrissy's latest boyfriend, she meets Danny, and he becomes her whole world. Neef and Danny, Danny and Neef. Despite absent parents and small-town bigotry directed at Danny for the colour of his skin, they find solace in each other. They dream of a different life together, convinced that Neef's stories and Danny's near-magic touch with plants will get them there. But as they grow older, their relationship is beset by the same forces that hold their families hostage: substance abuse, poverty and racism. Fifteen years later, Neef is determined to stay anonymous as Jennifer, until Danny's father appears looking for his missing son. Submerged in the memories she fled from, Neef is forced to reckon with her great love and loss, with what she and Danny did to each other and what others did to them. In this tender and moving debut, Emily Usher presents an aching love story impossible to forget.