My mother is still alive, and she is going to come for me one day.
Everyone thinks that Sophie is an orphan. True, there were no
other recorded female survivors from the shipwreck which left baby
Sophie floating in the English Channel in a cello case, but Sophie
remembers seeing her mother wave for help. Her guardian tells her it
is almost impossible that her mother is still alive, but that means
still possible. You should never ignore a possible.
So when the Welfare Agency writes to her guardian threatening to
send Sophie to an orphanage, she takes matters into her own hands
and flees to Paris to look for her mother, starting with the only
clue she has - the address of the cello maker.
Evading the French authorities, she meets Matteo and his network
of rooftoppers - urchins who live in the sky. Together they scour
the city for Sophie's mother before she is caught and sent back to
London, and most importantly before she loses hope.
Katherine Rundell was born in 1987 and grew up in Africa and
Europe. In 2008 she was elected a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.
Her first book,The Girl Savage, was born of her love of
Zimbabwe and her own childhood there; her second,
Rooftoppers,was inspired by summers working in Paris and by
night-time trespassing on the rooftops of All Souls. She is currently
working on her doctorate alongisde an adult novel.
