Precious Metal

A modern day Romeo and Juliet set among immigrants working in the UK metal trade

'Michelle Flatley thrusts you into the real world of wrecked streets, ethnic tensions and all the petty oppressions that attend people who live in Britain's blighted communities, telling a truth only fiction can get to the heart of.' —Paul Mason, author and broadcaster

'Flatley shows how the reality of life in England does not match up to what the women had imagined it would be; and examines the tensions at work as her characters try to adjust to living in a new culture. The result is a tale that's harrowing and uplifting by turns.' —Follow The Thread on My Beautiful England

A small girl is mysteriously knocked down in a back street in Blackburn and the Asian community blames the new influx of Romanians. As the Romanians Dragos and Nikolae continue to collect metal to survive, tensions rise even further and the Romanian Café is burnt down. Dragos tells his son 'Copper is cash, metal is money,' but the dangers of the metal trade soon become apparent. When eighteen-year-old Nikolae falls in love with the shopkeeper's daughter, Zareen, (meaning gold in Urdu) two cultures collide. Eighteen-year-old Zareen is due to marry her cousin but continues to see the metal collector Nikolae. With their families divided can they be together and can two different communities ever live together in peace?

Praise for Michelle Flatley

'A fantastic book from start to finish that is filled with humour, sadness, violence, wonderful friendships, it's got it all!' —Heather Butterworth, Amazon.co.uk

'Michelle Flatley takes you on an emotional journey that will make you think about England and society in general.' —Amazon.co.uk

Precious Metal was inspired by images of young immigrants in the media, the industrial landscape of Blackburn and newspaper stories about the criminal metal trade in northern England. Download it now.