Claire

Book excerpt: The liberated 60s have not reached the shores of New Zealand when Claire, a single pregnant girl is sent up-country to have her child, which is to be adopted out. The Sloane family are strangers who offer to board her through this time. But are they? Claire is thrust into the unknown when Alan and Hazel Sloane are involved in a truck accident on the farm. It is up to Claire to help. She does but is now alone on the farm. Initial fears at being alone reach a climax when an elderly man arrives to look after the animals. He is Bob Hodge, Hazel's father. Claire and Bob feed out in the snow and gradually an affinity develops between the pair. In this conservative rural area, the tranquillity of the surface hides a darker background that goes back a generation to before Claire was born. And she is directly involved. This is a story of how scars of the past are opened and conquered by the love of the present for and by Claire, a girl who becomes a woman in the months that make up 1961.