Virginia Lane is NOT a Hero by Rosalind Stopps. I came across this book at a book café in the UK. I liked the image on the orange cover with a pram, a dog, and a caption: But sometimes ordinary people do extraordinary things. It had me hooked. More so, as I didn’t have to spend a penny on it, as it came as my birthday gift after sending some meaningful glances at my loved ones!

Virginia Lane is not your typical protagonist. She is an unlikely hero.

She is a septuagenarian.

She is not brave.

She is dithery.

She is grief-stricken after losing her husband to cancer.

She misses her husband and keeps him alive by talking to him and also by continuing to write letters to his pen-pal, Annie, who lives in Scotland.

She wants to die and gives herself a timeline to end it all.

Yet when a young mother who lives down her lane leaves behind her little daughter Ocean in her backyard with a note asking her to keep her somewhere safe, Virginia does just that, without realizing that she might be jailed for kidnapping.

But then, I am jumping a wee bit forward by not taking you readers along. Ever since her beloved husband succumbs to cancer, Virginia is not herself. She finds herself at a loose end. Her estranged son lives in Australia, and he doesn’t want anything to do with her or England. He is relieved when she says she wants to be in the same house.

The only person who can bring a smile to Virginia’s face is the little girl who lives down her lane, with her cheery wave. But then she feels something is not right in the little girl or her mother’s life. The man who stays with them seems all wrong for the toddler. Virginia tries to find out more, and when things turn a bit nasty, tries to take it up with the authorities. Being a docile person and too full of her own grief, her words and accusations are not taken seriously. The man is nasty enough to threaten her.

On the day the toddler is left in her care, she escapes to Margate, a seaside town, where she was once happy with her husband. She realizes that the child had been physically abused and shares her concern with Annie, who comes over to help the elderly woman.

In a parallel world of neighbours, a young coloured teenage boy, Jackson, is forced to put his carefree life of entering a college on his own merit on hold to be the primary caregiver to his ailing grandmother and home-schools his young brother.  Though he too is barely an adult, he is riddled with anxiety and fear-psychosis for both his grandmother and his brother. Enter a dog that his brother kidnaps from a known abuser, and Jackson’s anxiety doubles.

To add to his worry, his young brother befriends Ocean, her grandmother, and her friend, and invites them to their house. Jackson realizes that they have much to hide. The story is how all the disparate lives intersect and how each one helps the other in keeping themselves and Ocean safe from the man who has killed her mother too and blames Virginia for it.

A slow-burner, but one that keeps the humanity burning and alive throughout. It is all about relative strangers coming together to help one another.

A lovely read indeed!

This blog is sprinting its way to the finish line with Piyush’s Plotters as part of The Blogchatter Half Marathon!