“And Dad took that personally. He pretty much took all injustice personally, but especially anything to do with Aboriginal people not being treated right. And as he’d told me a thousand times over, growing up in his father’s town had taught him that one person in power could do bad things, but it looks lots of people to let those bad things continue.”
Beth Teller’s dad is a detective. But he hasn’t been himself since Beth died in a tragic car accident. Beth’s mother died when she was young, so she is all her dad has left, so she just can’t leave him yet.
To ease him back into work, Beth’s dad is sent to investigate a fire in a remote country town. A town just like he had grown up in. A fire had burnt down a home for troubled youth. It seems like an easy case, until a body is found, and then more people are mysteriously murdered. There is one witness to the fire – Isobel Catching. Beth and her father visit her in the hospital – but things just get more mysterious when it become obvious that Catching can also see Beth’s ghost.
Catching tells them the haunting story of her family, of the stolen generations, and of how she came to be wandering alone near where the fire happened.
As Beth tried to unravel the mystery of what is happening in this small town, as she tries to help her father through his grief and encourages him to re-connect with her mother’s family, the truth starts to be revealed about who Catching really is, the brutal history of this small town and how love and friendship continues “beyond one life and into another.”
This is a small town mystery, a ghost story, an exploration into the history of Australia’s treatment of the Indigenous people of this ancient land.
Something for everyone!
Read more about the authors, Ambelin Kwaymullina and Ezekiel Kwaymullina