Publisher's Synopsis
1942, on the imagined island of San Carlos. 14-year-old Estrella Thomson is banished from the isolated fishing village where she has lived all her life. Her crime? Wanting to read and write. Prematurely ripe in body and mind and contemptuous of the boundaries placed on her by gender, race and social class, Estrella decides to go to Europe - the place where everything interesting seems to happen. But she has to get money for a ticket on a steamer, which means she has to get a job - which means she needs a pair of shoes, something she has never owned in her life. Naivety and hope abound.
