Dragonfly Summer, The — Eva Rice

Eva Rice, author of The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets -- a BookSense and Discover pick and a #4 UK bestseller -- returns with another novel of larger-than-life characters and spellbinding friendships.

It is 1962. Tara Jupp is seventeen and living with her seven brothers and sisters under the iron thumb of her father, the local vicar. After singing the solo at a wedding, she attracts the attention of the groom, Billy Laurier, one of the most successful music impresarios in the country. He believes she's a star. He takes Tara out of Cornwall and up to town.
Tara is caught up in the chaos and urgency of pre-Beatles London, a scene pioneered by Billy's wife, Matilda, a model hell-bent on self destruction; a boy named Digby who thinks nothing of wearing eyeliner to parties and entertaining tramps; and Inigo Wallace, a songwriter from America with an addiction to a folk singer named Bob Dylan.
This is a novel about leaving home and finding yourself in the right place at the right time entirely by accident. It is the story of what happens when you go out in a short skirt carrying nothing but a package of cigarettes. This is London before cell phones and e-mail and smoking laws. This is the sixties, and something big is about to happen. . . .