Shortlisted for Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize

Halo Llewelyn’s prayers begin, Dear God and Otis Redding, because she lives at Rockfarm, a rural recording studio where the sound of tractors and Stratocasters battle.

One midsummer night an American band called Tequila arrives in a beautiful silver bus, and when they and that summer are gone, they leave behind an equally beautiful baby boy; they leave Fred. Fred is everybody’s favourite, a golden child, and Halo adores him. By seventeen his ambition has propelled him out into the word and into the stardom that was always his destiny. Yet up on stage, being screamed at by hundred of teenage girls and boys, Fred will always turn his spotlight on Halo in the crowd. That’s the problem with falling in love with your charismatic almost-brother: it can never be a secret. In the end, the whole world has to know.

A seductive story of fate, magic, and rock ‘n’ roll, Diamond Star Halo shows what happens when a family and a farm become the breeding ground for fame.