![]() ![]() ![]() Hair loss is a symptom of leprosy, so she’s taken for a patient and subjected to some of the brutal cures that really did take place in those times. The Serpent House is a time-slip story and Annie finds herself able to travel back to a medieval leper hospital. And that’s why it was so important to me to write about Annie, who loses her hair after the death of her mother. ![]() I would have given anything to read a story in which a character was something more like me. I was jealous of Jo in Little Women for heroically selling her lovely locks. I was furious with Anne of Green Gables for being so ungrateful for her red braids. I was a voracious reader as a child and I can remember how it gave me a little twinge every time a character in a story referred to their hair. This was the 1970s and although the condition was known, there were no effective treatments or even any real understanding of why it happens. It doesn’t take much imagination to guess how it felt to be a young girl and a teenager forced to wear a series of bad wigs or cover-ups – it can seriously knock your confidence. When I was around eight years old, I lost almost all my hair and it didn’t grow back fully until I was an adult. She’s wearing a little scarf around her head. Sharp-eyed readers who look at the cover of The Serpent House might notice something particular about how the main character, Annie, is dressed. “I would have given anything to read a story in which a character was something more like me.” ![]()
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