A girl could stand up - Leslie Marshall

When six-year-old Elray reaches up to touch the moon in the Tunnel of Love, she narrowly escapes a freak electric current that claims the lives of both her parents. Suddenly orphaned, she is left stunned and mute, until two loving but undomesticated uncles step in. 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 reinvented.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, and begin to unearth the essential truths about courage, strength and the transforming power of love.In a book bursting with exuberance, Leslie Marshall lures us into a world of imagination and lawlessness, a place in which none of the usual rules apply, 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.