On Saturday afternoon the Chapter1 bookstore hosted the launch and book-reading of Luxembourg resident Ruth Dugdall's new novel, Nowhere Girl, to a large and enthusiastic audience.
Set in Luxembourg, the book tells the story of Ellie, a 17 year-old girl who disappears after a family outing to the Schueberfouer, the annual funfair in Luxembourg city.
Nowhere Girl is the first of the author's books not set in Suffolk; she explained that her 2-book deal signed on her arrival in the Grand Duchy, with Humber Boy B the first. She explained that the idea of Nowhere Girl came to her after dropping her children to school and spotting a poster advising parents not to let her children walk to school alone, due to potential kidnappings having been reported recently in nearby Belgium. The security guard at the school tried to persuade her that Luxembourg was safe, but she dug deeper and discovered through research what was below the surface - her responses were as a mother, as a former probation officer and as a writer.
To further her research she volunteered with the ABLP and visited prisons and prisoners in the Grand Duchy. In the back of her mind she was there as a crime-writer and looked at it from the perspective of the criminal.
She also had a hospital visit following a stroke which caused her to lose sight in one eye temporarily; she went through a lot of paperwork and thought of how someone without the correct paperwork being there illegally would cope, and contacted ASTI. These two anecdotes both formed strong storylines in the book Nowhere Girl, where a hidden side of Luxembourg is portrayed, and in which she also tells the story from the mother's perspective. It also features Kate, the probation officer character who has also featured in three of Ruth's former novels.
Ruth Dugdall read from a number of passages from Nowhere Girl - in which the term Nowhere Girl actually refers to four different characters - before signing copies for those attending.
Photos by Geoff Thompson
