The author’s first novel, Salt Creek, was a moving and frustrating look at Australia’s dystopian past. This one takes a leap forward to a dystopian near future in the US, where climate and other refugees are demonised and persecuted.
Artist Kitty Hawke has an almost mystical connection to the island she lives on, the last of generations of her family. Her attachment has cost her a marriage and a good relationship with her children and she is the last inhabitant, all others having fled to the mainland as their houses succumbed to the sea.
Her satisfying if solitary life is disrupted when her estranged granddaughter turns up with some friends, who clearly have secrets and troubles that could threaten everyone’s future.
Kitty is drawn back into a family of sorts, which ironically takes her off her beloved island.
But with love comes loss and Kitty becomes a vagabond, adrift in a dangerous land, searching for what is truly home.
Treloar employs poetic and evocative language that never goes OTT into the realms of pretension in the telling of her tale.
The scenario is all too believable and Kitty’s painful reengagement with the world and her family is moving and emotional.
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