Emily Green and Me

After years of illness, eleven-year-old Emily receives the heart of a seventeen-year-old boy who has died in a motor-bike accident.

But the organ comes with an attachment:the boy who had it first is still hanging around.

From'up there' he watches as she recovers - sometimes exasperated, other times with heart-warming tenderness.

Their worlds couldn't be more different. Emily is from upper-middle-class Cape Town and the boy was from poorer plot-dwelling folk living near Johannesburg.

While Emily struggles with becoming a teenager, the boy's interjections are a laugh a minute - not even death can dampen his streetwise spirit.

Following the closely-linked fates of these two endearing characters, Emily Green and Me is the poignant story of one life interrupted and one that is just unfolding.

A book for all of us who blink at the twin stars of life and death, and all that lies between.