'It's as if I am slowly sinking in the water, just occasionally making it back to the top for a gulp of air - to a sort of memory of what life can be - what life SHOULD be - and then down down down I go again. And each time the surfacing gets harder and harder and requires a greater feat of will, kicking and turning and fighting against the undertow....'
The only child of two famous and self-absorbed artists, Zelda Steele is adopted by her parent's patrons when she is just a baby. Great things are expected of this privileged young woman, but at twenty- seven Zelda is dead, leaving two young children and a body of work that only hints at her promise.
Decades later, Zelda's daughter Ruth returns to her childhood home to find the diaries her mother is rumoured to have kept. What they reveal takes Ruth on a journey into the past: her mother's, her grandmothers and, ultimately to question both her present.
