Cirrus@Austlit

'Bloodlines follows two Australian women as they make new lives for themselves in unfamiliar places. In modern-day Fremantle, 31-year-old Beth decides to travel to Papua New Guinea. Something has gone wrong for Beth in her life with boyfriend Sam – the reader does not find out what until late in proceedings – and at her father’s behest she takes a job with her aunt at her PNG missionary school. Meanwhile, 35 years earlier, another young woman, Rose, answers a classified and travels from Perth to a remote sheep station to start work as a cook. Rose, we know from the beginning, is Beth’s mother, and these parallel, intergenerational stories offer Sinclair the opportunity to contrast the two women’s characters and choices.' (Introduction)