The Strength of Old Shale

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 Whangamōmona. Blamed for an accident for which she has no recollection, her world implodes. 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. 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.

‘Beautifully written and cleverly composed’ Siobhan Harvey, multi-award winning poet and author