In the illustrious history of the theatrical Fishers, there are two boys named George: one is an eleven-year-old schoolboy, the other a ventriloquist's dummy. With no voice of his own but plenty to say, the dummy tells his life story: his humble beginnings in 1930 as a block of wood and some papier-mache, his fateful rise to vaudeville fame, and the horrible secret he's been made to keep. But the dummy has long since been laid to rest, forgotten and abandoned in the Fishers' dusty attic.In 1973, his self-possessed bur vulnerable namesake finds himself packed off to boarding school for the first time, far from the bosom of his family - his mother, Frankie, a dynamic actress; his grandma Queenie, children's party entertainer extraordinaire; and his bedridden great-grandmother, still in charge, though an echo of her glorious past. When fate brings the two Georges together, the dummy has been silent too long.From the author of the international bestseller Misfortune comes an utterly original novel of a flawed but formidable family - its dominant women, its disgruntled men, its decades-old secrets - and of two boys who find that truth is not always best out in the open. Wesley Stace writes of lies and mistakes, of heroism and failure, of knowing when to keep quiet and knowing when to speak, and of our innate and wholly human struggle to find a voice of our very own. Read Less