Columbus Day - Hardcover

Narrated through the honest and plaintive voice of 10-year-old Jessica, Janette Jenkins' debut novel Columbus Day follows the desperate search by the girl and her mother Olivia to find Olivia's father, the grandfather the little girl has never met. Jenkins' poetic prose vividly captures the setting of the North of England in 1973; Blackpool, for instance, is portrayed in all its scruffy glory:

Trams rattled, laughter, the shrieks from an invisible fairground, Radio 1. The tide was rolling in, filling the kidney-shaped pockets of water, getting closer to the rows of tartan blankets.

Olivia is an ethereal creature: beautiful, stylish but vague. Highly conscious of social etiquette--"...whatever you do, don't ask for ketchup"--her hold on reality becomes increasingly tenuous as she resorts to ever more eccentric methods of tracking down her now-idolised prey, the father who left her when she was eight. Alarmingly, she exposes her daughter to unnecessary dangers but, thanks to Jenkins' strengths as a writer, the reader cannot judge her too harshly. Even her womanising husband, Jessica's father, comes across as a likeable, if flawed, character who isn't fully aware of what is going on but steps in to help when he realises how vulnerable his wife has become. Most compelling though is how all this trauma affects little Jessica.

Character rather than plot-driven, Jenkins cares more about the repercussions of any possible reappearance by Jessica's grandfather than the reunion itself, making this a powerful exploration of love and hope. --Christina McLoughlin

In 1973, ten-year-old Jessica is taken on long expeditions to find her grandfather - who has been missing for over 20 years - by her beautiful but unbalanced mother. Their journeying takes them from eccentricity to something far darker.