Dimensions
156 x 229 x 18mm
The Petersen family arrives at their farmstead on the Banks Peninsula in 1867; it was bought sight-unseen from a Frenchman. It turns out to be a remote, precipitous scrap of land covered in bush and unsellable stumps. They borrowed money to get there from England and can't return. The few neighbours they have are a motley, suspicious assortment of old whalers, escaped convicts, wary French settlers and true-blue Tory squatters, and the family struggles to settle in this uncertain, anarchic world, where violence is commonplace and crimes go unpunished. While their parents founder, the two younger members of the family, Robbie and Hester, face their new life with resilience. To Robbie, the new land is a place of adventure, beauty and love. Meanwhile Hester finds solace in a journal written by the Frenchman who built their house, and through his story she finds a new way of looking at the strange and often frightening landscape around her. This is a story of hardship, resilience and of love.
