The Strength of Old Shale

When the bones of a mother and her child, wrapped in a Shetland lace shawl, are dug up from a forgotten graveyard, two worlds collide.

Ariel is rural tough, raised in the defiant republic that is Whangamomona. When her childhood nemesis is found decapitated in a sports car beneath the bull bars of Ariel's ute, her world implodes. She has no recollection of the accident, but now a court trial is looming and rumours are running hot. Ariel seeks refuge back at university in Dunedin, where she prefers the company of old gold mining bones to real people.

Isbell is also tough and running from ghosts. She is a whisperer who prefers the company of horses to real people. As a young woman, she has left behind depression times in Shetland and now makes her way from Ballarat, Australia, to the New Zealand goldfields, caring for 54 Cobb and Co. coach horses in the hold of the SS India. The year is 1861.

Is there a link between these two worlds wrapped in that old shale?

The Strength of Old Shale is a stand-alone sequel to The Strength of Eggshells, winner of the 2020 NZ Booklovers Award for best adult fiction.