IN THE summer of 1910 sixteen-year-old Sammy Kiteland leaves his sister's wedding party well fed and happy. But when he arrives home a stranger tells him that he no longer lives there.

His widowed father had slipped away from the celebrations early, to conclude a secret deal. He'd sold everything in their lodgings and vanished, leaving his son with no money, no food no home, and just the clothes on his back.

Two weeks later young Sammy gazes across Victoria Square from the stone steps of Bolton Town Hall, listening to an eccentric preacher and deciding between his choices of starvation, the workhouse or a walk.

He chooses the walk, and it takes him on a 200-mile journey, from one side of England to the other.

On the way, he meets an elephant, a hypnotist, a boy trapped in his head, horror in a shake hole, a screaming woman in the sky, a ragged-trousered philosopher and a professor under a city with a 'bomb' he wants to drown.

It is a journey that calls on all the wit, grit and hope that Sammy can muster.

It leads him to black diamonds, emerald eyes and ruby hair.

It also introduces him to the real Sammy Kiteland.

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