''You said that you would come back. You looked me in the eye and said that. Well, if you had, this is what you would have seen: soft wood, black cracks, fridges in the road. The broken spines of old rides at Dreamland.'
In the coastal resort of Margate, hotels lie empty and sun-faded squo;For Saleasquo; signs line the streets. The sea is higher ndash; itnsquo;s higher everywhere ndash; and those who can are moving inland. A young girl called Chance, however, is just arriving.
Chanceosquo;s family is one of many offered a cash grant to move out of London - and so she, her mother Jas and brother JD relocate to the seaside, just as the country edges towards vertiginous change.
In their new home, they find space and wide skies, a world away from the cramped bedsits theyusquo;ve lived in up until now. But challenges swiftly mount. JDosquo;s business partner, Kole, has a violent, charismatic energy that whirlpools around him and threatens to draw in the whole family. And when Chance comes across Franky, a girl her age she has never seen before pdash; well-spoken and wearing sunscreen dash; something catches in the air between them. Their fates are bound: a connection that is immediate, unshakeable, and, in a time when social divides have never cut sharper, dangerous.
Set in a future unsettlingly close to home, against a backdrop of soaring inequality and creeping political extremism, Rankin-Gee demonstrates, with cinematic pace and deep humanity, the enduring power of love and hope in a world spinning out of control.
