Description

When the bones of a
mother and her child, wrapped in a Shetland lace shawl, are dug up from a
forgotten graveyard, two worlds collide.

Ariel is rural tough, raised in the defiant
republic that is Whangamomona. When her
childhood nemesis is found decapitated in a sports car beneath the bull bars of
Ariels ute, her world implodes. She has
no recollection of the accident but now a court trial is looming and rumours
are running hot. Ariel seeks refuge back at university in Dunedin where she
prefers the company of old gold mining bones to real people.

Isbell is also
tough and running from ghosts. She is a whisperer who prefers the company of
horses to real people. As a young woman
she has left behind depression times in Shetland and now makes her way from
Ballarat, Australia to the New Zealand goldfields caring for 54 Cobb and Co
coach horses in the hold of the SS India.
The year is1861.

Is there a link
between these two worlds wrapped in that old shale?

This is a stand-alone
sequel to 'The Strength of Eggshells', winner of the 2020 NZ Booklovers Award
for best adult fiction.