Winner of the Australian Ditmar Awards for Best Novel and for Professional Artwork
Finalist for the Aurealis Award
A richly imagined dark fantasy that pulses with the beautiful destruction of a town reclaimed by the natural world. Sub-tropical Bellworth is founded on floodplains and root-bound secrets. And Charlie, remarkable only for vanished friends and a successful sister, plans to leave for good, just as soon as he deals with his dead aunt's house. Then Grace arrives, desperate, with roses pressing up through her skin, and drags Charlie into the ghost-choked mysteries of Bellworth, uncovering the impossible consequences of loss and desire -- and a choice Charlie made when he was a boy.
But peeling back the rumors and lies that cocoon the suburb disturbs more than complacent neighbors and lost souls. And Charlie and Grace are forced to a decision that threatens not only their lives, but all they believed those lives could be.
