When Saskia's mother Kiki died she left each of her three children a specific item which she said they would each understand the meaning of. To Saskia, she left a caravan, which Saskia does not understand at all. Saskia is a busy primary school teacher, a mother to a young girl named Anouk, and wife to Dane who is successful real estate agent in their home town of Broome in Western Australia. When would she have time to go off somewhere in a caravan, let alone the inclination. It is yet another sign that Saskia wasn't as aligned with her mother as she might once have been.
While looking around in the caravan, she finds a few items that pique her interest including an old diary and not least of all a ticket for a car and caravan to cross from the mainland to Tasmania. After reading a few pages, Saskia realises that maybe she didn't know the woman in the diary at all, and all she wants to do is take the trip to Tasmania and to see if she can find out who Kiki really was. After all, Saskia is a burnt out primary school teacher, her daughter is struggling and she can't quite put her finger on why and her husband takes her for granted and wouldn't really miss her if she went away for a while.
This is a dual timeline where the second part of the story is set in northern Tasmania in the late 1960s. Greta de Winter who is the teenage daughter of charismatic Dirk de Winter and his wife Fay. Dirk is that guy in town. The one who everyone owes a favour to, the guy to turn to when you need something done, always friendly and happy for a chat. Except that Dirk is very different at home. Fay has tried to hide the terrible things that happen at home from Greta. There is always a reason why Fay needs to take to her bed for days at a time, or for scrapes, for why she stays at home all the time and why her father makes excuses for her to everyone in town.
The thing that brings Fay joy is her work as a taxidermist. She learnt her trade from her father and she is very good at it, producing museum quality specimens of birds and dioramas. Greta too has a love of birds and nature, so when she hears that the local wetlands are going to be drained she is determined to put a stop to it, no matter what.
As Saskia and Anouk travel south in their caravan, Saskia realises that there are so many questions that she needs answers to. Why did her mother leave Tasmania, why did she never talk of her past, why did she change her name, and why was she planning to go back after all these years?
Often in dual timeline I find myself more invested in one of the story lines, but that wasn't the case here. In the historical timeline we have a compelling story about nature and the environment and about a young girl gaining understanding of her life. In the contemporary story line, we see a woman who has slowly been losing herself without realising it, and who needs a change more than she can ever know. Both stories are lovingly told and beautifully linked in a way that I found so moving at the end.
This is Tasmanian author Claire van Ryn's second book and I will now have to go back to the first one to read it because this one was just so good! It is clear that she loves birds and in fact, the taxidermy part of the story is inspired by a member of her own family. Interspersed throughout the story are diagrams of different kinds of birds with a short bio of them and whether they are in danger of becoming extinct or safe, at least for now.
It would be remiss of me not to mention the cover and book design. The publisher has done an amazing job with both. The cover is gorgeous, and the illustrations int he book are fantastic a well.
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