Neef has always been a storyteller and her story now working in a café in London is that her
name is Jennifer. Jennifer never knew a boy called Danny never loved him never had him
wrenched away from her. But when Neef was a teenager and her troubled mother moved them into a
flat above a pub in a working-class Yorkshire town Danny was her whole world. Neef and Danny.
Danny and Neef. Despite absent parents and small-town bigotry directed at Danny for the colour
of his skin they found solace in each other convinced that Neef's stories and Danny's
near-magic touch with plants would be their key to a different life. But as they got older
their dreams became tarnished by new distractions and new ways to forget themselves eventually
threatening to destroy them both. Fifteen years later Neef is Jennifer and determined to stay
anonymous until someone from her past appears to remind her of who she used to be. Confronted
by the memories she fled from Neef is forced to face the decisions she's made and the person
she's become. At once heart-breaking and hopeful Wild Ground shows us an all-consuming first
love as it grapples with addiction identity and class barriers. In this tender and moving
debut Emily Usher presents an aching love story impossible to forget.
