Frank and Leon are two men from different times, discovering that sometimes all you learn from your parents' mistakes is how to make different ones of your own.
Frank is trying to escape his troubled past by running away to his family's beach shack. As he struggles to make friends with his neighbours and their precocious young daughter Sal, he discovers the community has fresh wounds of its own. A girl is missing, and when Sal too disappears, suspicion falls on Frank.
Decades earlier, Leon tries to hold together his family's cake shop as their suburban life crumbles in the aftermath of the Korean War. When war breaks out again, Leon must go from sculpting sugar figurines to killing young men as a conscript in the Vietnam War.
'Superb' The Times
'The landscape of Australia's east coast looms large in the book, wild and sinister, filled with light and tragedy. This is a sad and lovely novel from a talented new writer' Observer
'A terrifically self-assured debut...a cauterising, cleansing tale, told with muscular writing' Guardian
'This adroit examination of loss, lostness and trauma is the beginning of great things' Independent
'A compelling read' Financial Times
'Just sometimes, a book is so complete, so compelling and potent, that you are fearful of breaking its hold. This is one... Evie Wyld knits together past and present, with tension building all the time' Daily Mail
