Cirrus@Austlit

'A stunning novel of love and courage by the bestselling author of The Passengers.

'Alice is only nine years old in 1910 when she is sent to the feared Coast Hospital lazaret at Little Bay in Sydney, a veritable prison where more patients are admitted than will ever leave. She is told that she's visiting her mother, who disappeared one day when Alice was two. Once there, Alice learns her mother is suffering from leprosy and that she has the same disease.

'As she grows up, the secluded refuge of the lazaret becomes Alice's entire world, her mother and the other patients and medical staff her only human contact. The patients have access to a private sandstone-edged beach, their own rowboat, a piano and a library of books, but Alice is tired of the smallness of her life and is thrilled by the thought of the outside world. It is only when Guy, a Yuwaalaraay man wounded in World War I, arrives at The Coast, that Alice begins to experience what she has yearned for, as they become friends and then something deeper.

'Filled with vivid descriptions of the wild beauty of the sea cliffs and beaches surrounding the harsh isolation of the lazaret, and written in evocative prose, The Coast is meticulously researched historical fiction that holds a mirror to the present day. Heartbreaking and soul-lifting, it is a universal story of love, courage, sacrifice and resilience.' (Publication summary) 

'When Rachel is pregnant with Lola, she imagines motherhood will involve pushing her sleeping infant in a pram through sun-dappled parks, suffused with the purest love she has ever felt. Then she gives birth to a screaming, colicky child in a country far from home.

'Feeling isolated and unsupported, she is plagued with thoughts of hurting her daughter. This is the story of what happens next.

'Lola is angry. Lola is hungry. Lola spits the dummy that Rachel offers up, screams louder. A man in a suit walking past gives her a look. A shut-up-your-baby kind of look.

'"Oh Lola", Rachel says, and grits her teeth to the hard slats of the bench, the painful pull of Lola's mouth. She blinks away the watery world. Above, the currawong starts up again. That eerie, weary echoing song.

'Lola doesn't look up, just works her jaw, her mouth, one hand rested on Rachel's chest. Her fingers are as wide as they will spread, as if to say, you - all of this - everything - mine.

'Limprecht writes a very different portrayal of the person who is so frequently the villain in our culture: the mother who abandons her child. Dark, honest and true, this is an extraordinary novel about parenthood and identity. ' (Publisher's blurb)