The novel is set at the turn of the nineteenth century, and brings together characters from various folk songs of the period, centrally a woman called Dolly Coxon, who is mentioned, albeit obliquely, in the well-known song from Newcastle Upon Tyne, “Do Li A”. This is her story, as imagined by Jez, going some way to explain why an impoverished woman from the Tyne quayside should have been celebrated in a song that has survived for over two hundred years.

Jez Lowe 2017

Ray