From the author of Sunday Times bestsellers One Child and Ghost Girl comes a heartbreaking story of one teacher's determination to turn a chaotic group of damaged children into a family.

They were all just "somebody else's kids" – four problem children placed in Torey Hayden's class because nobody knew what else to do with them. They were a motley group of kids in great pain: a small boy who echoed other people's words and repeated weather forecast; a beautiful seven-year-old girl brain damaged by savage parental beatings; an angry ten-year-old who had watched his stepmother murder his father; a shy twelve-year-old who had been cast out of Catholic school when she became pregnant. But they shared one thing in common: a remarkable teacher who would never stop caring – and who would share with them the love and understanding they had never known to help them become a family.