A Girl Could Stand up

When six-year-old Elray stands up to touch the moon, she narrowly escapes a freakish electric current that claims the lives of both her parents while riding through the amusement park Tunnel of Love. Suddenly orphaned, she is left stunned and mute, until two loving but not-so-domesticated uncles step in to take charge. One is her cross-dressing uncle Ajax, who insists on being addressed as ‘aunt’; the other is Uncle Harwood, a macho photographer, full of swagger and fond of a drink. When the deceptively sweet Irish lawyer Rena moves in to mount a lucrative lawsuit against the fairground, the eccentric household becomes the very model of family life re-invented. Outwardly full of adventure and thrill-seeking energy, Elray stores her grief deep inside. With young Raoul she meets her match. In pursuit of invincibility, they perform reckless acts of bravery and dangerous rituals that lead them into underground crypts and across immense rivers. Together, they begin to unearth the essential truths about courage, strength, and the transforming power of love and family. Bursting with exuberance and vibrancy, Leslie Marshall lures us into a child’s world of imagination and lawlessness, a place in which all sense of normality is lost, until it is time to fall in love. In the unique character of Elray Mayhew she has surely created one of literature’s most unforgettable heroines.