Author(s): Anna Mackenzie

YA Fiction

The follow-up to Ebony Hill, shortlisted for 2010 NZ Post Children's Book Awards and CLF Notable Book of 2010. A year on from the aggressive attacks against them, the farming community at Ebony Hill still shows the cracks. Everyone is uneasy - workers watch their backs when out in the fields. When it becomes clear the paramilitaries aren't about to give up, hard decisions must be made. The attention of Vidya's governors turns to the ocean, and the islands. Can our heroine Ness risk going back to the Island of Dunnett, the home she narrowly escaped? If she does, what will she find? How will she deal with the legacy of her defection and the scars it has left on those she loves? The ties of blood that bind Ness threaten to tear her apart, while new currents drag at her, shifting her course. The final book in the 'Sea-wreck Stranger Trilogy' is a haunting exploration of belonging, of Ness's attempts to make whole the tangled threads of her heart, of the stark and unsettling reality of ambition and greed. 'Mackenzie has a terrific feeling for dramatic pace, and for the emotional and physical landscape her beleaguered teens inhabit.'- Margie Thompson