Commonwealth Prize nominee Genni Gunn has penned an ingenious psychological novel, placing at its dark centre a flawed but redeemable heroine, Kate Mason, a 30-something social anthropologist returning to the emotional crime scene she reluctantly calls home.
While Kate mercilessly unearths the remnants of a life littered with evidence of abandonment, lies and loss, she also unravels the coil that binds her to Iris, the mother she never knew. Iris' haunting disappearance lurks on the periphery of strained relations with Joe, Kate's taciturn father; Rose, her benevolent aunt; Angie, her childhood girlfriend; and Ray, her not-so-estranged ex. Like the endangered cultures she researches, Kate faces extinction through contact with poisonous knowledge and must weigh the price of truth or risk annihilation at the hands of those she so desperately wants to trust.