Queen's Park: A Tale of Two Young Lives (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798227310187)

James is a fourteen-year-old boy from rural Norfolk who finds himself unceremoniously transplanted into a multicultural suburb of London in 1975. He gets placed into a local, rather unruly secondary school not far from his house in Queen's Park. Here, he meets Marsha, a fifteen-year-old and the youngest daughter of two Jamaican immigrants of the Windrush Generation. They quickly strike up a close relationship, despite James never having come into contact with persons of the opposite sex or from a different cultural background.

The story spans twenty-five years, during which James and Marsha tackle their school examinations, their entry to university, and the ups and downs of their burgeoning relationship. James is very naïve. Marsha is much more mature. They live in a world cocooned by their families and oblivious to the racism of the time which they experience from both sides of the divide. Gradually, they emerge from this protection to face the challenges that many young people experience.

They go their separate ways, but always stay in touch in a period bereft of the instant gratification of social media. They meet other people, and start new relationships, but always remain true to each other.

It is a story of coming of age during the last quarter of the 20th century.