Natasha's life is a perfectly calibrated illusion, motivated by a feverish desperation to hide her working-class, dysfunctional childhood. No one who looks at her life can deny this strategy is working.





Social mobility: tick.



Happy daughter: tick.



Keeping recovering addict mother at bay: tick.



Scheduling sex to keep marriage alive: tick.





The only stain on perfection is the rooster, Freddie Mercury, next door, whose operatic crowing pushes Natasha to the brink.





When her husband leaves her for their slovenly, easy-going dog walker, Natasha's carefully curated life implodes, and she is plunged into a spiral of chaos and obsession as her perfect life unravels.





But an unlikely friendship with Freddie Mercury the rooster and his owner Barry sets Natasha on the slow journey back home, to her family, her roots, and herself.



Rooster is a poignant, laugh-out-loud story of marriage, perfectionism, middle life, and how the ghosts of childhood come back to haunt us even when we're sure we've left them behind.



Emma Hewitt is a UK-born, Canada-raised writer living between London and New York. Her debut novel, Rooster, comes after a career spent telling stories on screen and on stage. She writes Plus One, a Substack about visibility, identity and life adjacent to fame, currently in development for TV. Before fiction, she made documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4, ITV and PBS. Earlier still, she worked as an actress with the National Theatre, the Old Vic, the BBC and ITV. She spent many years raising her two daughters, travelling as a family around the world – part adventure, part logistics, part improvised caravan – an experience that continues to shape the way she writes about love, mess and keeping it together.