Cirrus@Austlit

'Readers expect historical fiction novels not only to evoke authentically a particular time and place but also to be accessible and relatable to modern sensibilities by way of the problems that the characters face. In Unsettled author Gay Lynch sets out to do just this, by drawing on some of her own family’s stories and on factual events and persons in the Mt Gambier area of south-east South Australia and Melbourne, in the second half of the nineteenth century while, at the same time, having her characters deal with issues that are very familiar to 21^st century Australians.' (Introduction)

'When a young, unidentified woman is pulled alive and well from Sydney Harbour in 2013, the connections to another woman – found in similar circumstances forty years earlier – present psychiatrist Kathryn Brookley with a terrible decision as the events of the present and past begin to mirror each other and the gap between truth and illusion shrinks.

'When the young woman goes further and declares that she has lived continuously since coming to ‘understanding’ in the 14^th century, her vivid accounts of life, love, childbirth, and loss in the Middle Ages seem so authentic that they test Kathryn’s scientific objectivity to the limit.

'As Kathryn delves she discovers that she is not the only one whose habitual assumptions about life have been torn asunder by an apparent experience of the miraculous in connection with the mystery woman.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.