Katie Barnes longs to be a normal thirteen-year-old but finds herself a homeless outcast, bitter against a God who allows such misery.

"The girl wore gold loop earrings and a full skirt that came all the way down to her ankles. Her feet were bare. She had coal black hair that was pulled into two long braids. Her black eyes flashed... She was trying to take over Katy's secret hide-out house! Katy and Marya did not start out as friends. Katy even suspected Marya of casting evil spells. But when Katy was forced to trust Marya, she learned to become her friend. And soon the strange ways of the Gypsies no longer seemed so strange." --Back cover.

Over the past decade, interest in Gypsies, Roma and Travellers (GRT) has risen up the political and media agendas, but they remain relatively unknown. This topical book is the first to chart the history and contemporary developments in GRT community activism, and the community and voluntary organisations and coalitions which support it. Underpinned by radical community development and equality theories, it describes the communities' struggle for rights against a backdrop of intense intersectional discrimination across Europe, and critiques the ambivalent role of community development in fostering these campaigns. Much of it co-written by community activists, it is a vehicle for otherwise marginalised voices, and an essential resource and inspiration for practitioners, lecturers, researchers and members of GRT communities.

The author introduces a homeless teen living far from her friends.