ABOUT THE BOOK

A woman running from her past rents a lonely cottage haunted by drowned lovers and the presence of the sea. Here - amongst the local writers and conservationists, the Aborigines, fishermen, ferals and drifters - Jessica Sorensen almost loses her life and then remakes it. In this haunted and haunting story, Dorothy Hewett has written a novel about love and loss and the endless drift of the tides.

Dorothy Hewett was born in Perth, Western Australia, in 1923. A well-known poet and dramatist, she has published thirteen plays, nine collections of poetry and three novels. The first volume of her autobiography, 'Wild Card', won both the Victorian and the Western Australian Premiers' Prizes for Non-fiction. 'Peninsula' won the WA Premier's Prize for Book of the Year, and the Banjo Award for Poetry.

Married to the writer Merv Lilley, she has five children and, after eighteen years in the inner suburbs of Sydney, now lives in the Blue Mountains. At present she is working on the second volume of her autobiography.