She stood still, staring ahead over open heathland. The sea lay spread before her – a wide expanse of heaving grey, faintly flecked with white. The leaden hue was mirrored so closely by the sky that the horizon could barely be seen. Sky and sea were one – a vast, cold realm. She felt a slow shiver travel up her spine.
Stella Boyd grew up in a small Tasmanian village, but she hasn’t been back since she was a teenager. Now she is a successful journalist travelling the world and reporting from dangerous locations. But when she receives word that her fisherman father is missing at sea she knows that she must return to Halfmoon Bay and face the demons of her past.
Back at home Stella must deal with the events of 1975 and face Zeph, the young man she met in an isolated bay near her house. Only when she deals with the emotional events of her teenage years can she begin to build a future for herself and her mother.
The Stone Angel is a beautiful, heart wrenching novel, set in a quiet fishing village in Tasmania. It is a tale of family secrets, and of life dreams, as well as of fate, and draws the reader into an emotionally fraught journey over the main character’s sixteenth summer, and the period following her father’s death sixteen years later, with glimpses at the intervening years.
A beautiful book.
The Stone Angel, by Katherine Scholes
Macmillan, 2006