Carefully measured storytelling in this enveloping tale of life's small treasures lost and found
Sunday Times
Beautifully done. It reads absolutely true
Scotsman
An impressive, workmanlike, poignant piece of work: the barren husband and wife in the foreground; a wealth of vividly drawn minor characters behind them; and, framing the whole picture, the great brooding sea, giver and taker of life.
Sunday Telegraph
Masterful...a work of rare beauty
Financial Times
A richly evocative tale
Daily Mail
Subtle but arresting...an exhiliarating saga
The Times
Following the death of his parents in a car crash, eleven-year-old Alex Dove is torn from his life on a remote farm in Tasmania and sent to school in England. When he returns to Australia twelve years later, the timeless beauty of the land and his encounter with a young woman whose own life has been marked by tragedy, persuade him to stay. They marry, and he finds himself drawn into the eccentric, often hilarious dynamics of island life.
Longing for children, the couple open their home to a disquieting guest, a teenage castaway, whose presence in their home begins to unravel their tenuously forged happiness.
Following the death of his parents in a car crash, eleven-year-old Alex Dove is torn from his life on a remote farm in Tasmania and sent to school in England. When he returns to Australia twelve years later, the timeless beauty of the land and his encounter with a young woman whose own life has been marked by tragedy, persuade him to stay.