My mother was a prostitute. My grandmother and great-grandmother were prostitutes. Maybe I should have given the family business a chance. To westerners, being Gypsy means being wild, romantic and free. To Eliska Tanzer, it means being rented out to dance for older men. It means living without running water. It means not being allowed a job or an education. It means being stuffed into a bare room with all your aunts and cousins, fighting over the thin, stained blanket the way you fight over the last piece of half-mouldy bread. It means joining the family prostitution ring when you're still a child. But Eliska was given a way out. Slung out of Hoe School and shipped to England in a washing machine box, she thought she had made it. As a young girl, alone, in a new country, her dream soon turned into a nightmare. Eliska was forced to live and work in unbearable abuse as she tried to forge her new life alone. Drawing on the struggles of her gypsy ancestors, Eliska took inspiration from them to give her the strength to carry on and eventually start a successful business and become an accomplished writer and dancer. The Girl From Nowhere is an inspiring and triumphant story of family, persistence and the meaning of freedom.