WINNER OF THE BARBARA JEFFERIS AWARD 2020

'Atmospheric...evocative...important.' Tom Keneally

Kitty Hawke, the last inhabitant of a dying island sinking into the wind-lashed Chesapeake Bay, has resigned herself to annihilation...

Until one night her granddaughter blows ashore in the midst of a storm, desperate, begging for sanctuary. For years, Kitty has kept herself to herself - with only the company of her wolfdog, Girl - unconcerned by the world outside, or perhaps avoiding its worst excesses. But blood cannot be turned away in times like these. And when trouble comes following her granddaughter, no one is more surprised than Kitty to find she will fight to save her as fiercely as her name suggests...

A richly imagined and mythic parable of home and kin that cements Lucy Treloar's place as one of our most acclaimed novelists.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE PRIME MINISTER'S LITERARY AWARD FOR FICTION 2020
SHORTLISTED FOR NSW PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARD FOR FICTION 2020
SHORTLISTED FOR ABIA LITERARY FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020
LONGLISTED FOR THE VOSS LITERARY AWARD 2020

PRAISE FOR LUCY TRELOAR

'A capacious talent' The Australian

'Deeply moving' The Age

'This lovely, atmospheric book sings of the inherent human drama, rising fragility of home-country and the recurrent need to flee and to protect. The journey told in this book is so evocative it will stay with the reader as an important literary fable of our period of history, in which a fraught world threatens all of us with flight, exile and bewilderment.' Tom Keneally, bestselling author of Schindler's Ark

'A work that is more than powerful: it's transformative.' Australian Book Review

'Disturbing but beautiful' Susan Wyndham