LoveReading Says
Shortlisted for the Costa Children's Book Award 2009.
Costa Book Awards 2009 Judges' comment: "We were captivated by this beautifully-written, poignant and ultimately heart-warming story."
Beautifully written and achingly moving, Solace of the Road is the poignant and desperate story of one girl’s search for her mother. Running away from her foster home, Holly dons the blonde wig she finds and reinvents herself as the older, more glamorous and dangerously bold Solace and sets off to hitchhike to Ireland which, in her memory, is the place she locates her mother. Through her impressions of the present and her memories of the past, ‘Solace’ pieces together the painful fragments of her life.
Siobhan sadly only wrote 4 books in total before her tragic death from cancer in 2007. They were Solace of the Road, Bog Child, A Swift Pure Cry and The London Eye Mystery but her memory lives on in a Trust that has
been set up in her name as well as through her writing.
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About Siobhan Dowd
Siobhan Dowd was born to Irish parents and brought up in London. She spent much of her youth visiting the family cottage in Aglish, County Waterford and later the family home in Wicklow Town.
She attended a Catholic grammar school in south London and then gained a degree in Classics at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University. After a short stint in publishing, she joined the writer's organisation PEN, initially as a researcher for its Writers in Prison Committee.
She went on to be Program Director of PEN American Center's Freedom-to-Write Committee in New York City. Her work here included founding and leading the Rushdie Defense Committee USA and travelling to Indonesia and Guatemala to investigate local human rights conditions for writers. During her seven-year spell in New York, Siobhan was named one of the "top 100 Irish-Americans" by Irish-America Magazine and AerLingus, for her global anti-censorship work. On her return to the UK, Siobhan co-founded English PEN's readers and writers programme, which takes authors into schools in socially deprived areas, as well as prisons, young offender's institutions and community projects.
During 2004, Siobhan served as Deputy Commissioner for Children's Rights in Oxfordshire, working with local government to ensure that statutory services affecting children's lives conform with UN protocols.
A Swift Pure Cry, Siobhan's first novel, was published by David Fickling Books, an imprint of Random House Children's Books, in March 2006. In May 2007, it won the Eilis Dillon award in Ireland for a first-time children's author. It was also long-listed for the Guardian Children's Book Prize and short-listed for the Booktrust Teenage Fiction Prize and the Waterstones Children's Book Prize.
In May 2007, Siobhan was named one of "25 authors of the future" by Waterstones Books as part of the latter's 25th anniversary celebrations. Siobhan died on 21st August 2007 aged 47. She had been receiving treatment for advanced breast cancer for 3 years and, did not go gentle into that good night.
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