"Set in a Maltese immigrant community in Cardiff, Wales, in the 1960s and peopled with sharp-edged, luminously drawn characters, The Hiding Place is the story of Frankie Gauci, his wife, Mary and their six daughters. It chronicles in graceful language Frankie's unforgivable betrayal: gambling away his family's livelihood and eventually the family itself.".

"The Gaucis' story is seen through the eyes of Dolores, the youngest daughter and, in her father's estimation, the embodiment of bad luck, condemned to bear the mark of a family that is rapidly singeing at the edges.

With a lyricism that belies the horrors she so often recounts ("children burnt and children bartered: someone must be to blame"), Dolores presents an unsparing portrayal of the fear and hopelessness of childhood amid grim poverty and neglect, of children growing up without safety nets and on sunken foundations."--BOOK JACKET.