Book description
A fascinating novel about secrets, finding a home and early colonial
New Zealand. 'I miss my smiling son more than any other man before or
since.' London 1866. Elizabeth Smith is struggling to survive when she
hears that her former New Zealand employers, Judge and Lady Martin, are
returning to England. Accompanied by her dear friend, the lunatic
Reverend Cotton, she makes a pilgrimage to settle old scores. Elizabeth
is also accompanied by liberal doses of opiates and two small ghosts,
walking by her side, whispering, murmuring, calling her. Award-winning
writer Stephanie Johnson lovingly peoples a landscape of the past.
Mid-century New Zealand, London and the spa town of Buxton are vividly
evoked in a novel about motherhood, earliest colonial days, pharmacology
and poreirewa - the yearning for absent loved ones. Stephanie Johnson
is the author of two collections of poetry, The Bleeding Ballerina and
Moody Bitch; three collections of short stories, The Glass Whittler, All
the Tenderness Left in the World and Drowned Sprat; and eight previous
novels: Crimes of Neglect, The Heart's Wild Surf, The Whistler, Belief,
The Shag Incident, Music from a Distant Room, John Tomb's Head and The
Swimmer's Rope. The Shag Incident won the Montana Medal for Fiction in
2002. Stephanie has won the Bruce Mason Playwrights Award and Katherine
Mansfield Fellowship. Many of her novels have been published in
Australia, America and the United Kingdom.
