Keep Your Head Up, My Girl

Peggy’s brother is born of prostitution. To evade heartless local authorities, thirteen-year-old Peggy binds the newborn baby to her chest and flees on horseback into the night.Aided at critical times by a mysterious ancestral presence, she finds sanctuary in the Marlborough Sounds with her mother’s childhood friend and people from a Maori village. In 1917, a disastrous house fire and a broken heart drive Peggy and her brother across Cook Strait to the city of Wellington. There she finds her father’s family at last, but is met with cynicism and distrust.

Fiercely determined to make her own way and protect her brother, Peggy encounters love and loss during World War I, an influenza epidemic, and the Great Depression. Courage, quick wit, and dressmaking skills are vital as Peggy strives to succeed in the changing world of fashion.

Keep your head up, my girl is a gripping story of a strong willed young woman carving a path for herself during a turbulent time in New Zealand’s history.