Cirrus@Austlit

'It’s January 1974, and a devastating flood is about to change the lives of four generations of women. Maggie Rowe is thirty-five, a teacher, and still living with her mother, Vera, in a tiny cottage in Hill Street, Brisbane. Next door lives Donna Birtles, a feckless twenty-something single mum, and her little daughter, Flower.

'Early one rain-drenched morning at the height of the flood, Donna and Flower seek shelter with Maggie and Vera . . .

'However, once the water recedes, Donna seems reluctant to move out, particularly when she meets Roddy, a casual worker on the clean-up gang. With Donna now disappearing for months on end, Maggie is forced to take on the role of Flower’s guardian – at the expense of her own hopes and longings.

'Flower is the daughter Maggie never had. And she’s the daughter Donna had but didn’t want.

'So when Donna finally returns to reclaim her child, who has the right to be Flower's mother?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'It is the late 1940s, and the Broody River runs through a maze of sandbanks into the Coral Sea. On its southern bank lies the holiday town of Baroodibah. But its northern shore is wild – unsettled except for The River House, an old weatherboard box on stumps where the Carlyle family take their holidays.'

'For four-year-old Laurie Carlyle the house and its untold stories fire the imagination. It is a place of boating trips and nature collections, of the wind howling, the sheoaks sighing and the pelicans soaring into the blue sky.'

'But when a squabble between Laurie and her older brother Tony takes an unexpected turn, she detects the first hints of family discord. As the years pass, The River House holidays seem to shine a light on the undercurrents in the family: the secret from her mother's past, the bitterness between Tony and their father Doug, and her sister Miranda's increasingly erratic and dangerous behaviour . . . ' (Source: Publisher's website)