The Girl In The Polka Dot Dress

Beryl Bainbridge

In the rainswept summer of 1968 Rose sets off for the United States from Kentish Town to meet a man she knows as Washington Harold in her suitcase a polka-dot dress and a one-way ticket. In a country rocked by the assassination of Martin Luther King and a rising groundswell of violence they are to join forces in search of the charismatic and elusive Dr Wheeler - oracle guru and redeemer - whom Rose credits with rescuing her from a terrible childhood and against whom Harold nurses a silent grudge.

As they trail their quarry zigzagging through America in a camper van the odd couple - Rose damaged child of grey postwar Britain and nervous obsessive driven Harold - encounter a ragged counter-cultural army of Wheeler's acolytes eddying among dangerous currents of obscure dissent and rage. But somewhere in the wide American darkness Dr Wheeler is waiting.