The Desert Road

Returning home for the first time in eight years, Tess hears the house nibbling and ticking around her as it used to; she takes in the familiar iron and dirt smell of the cold here in Turangi where she grew up, her Italian father a tunneller with the Tongariro Power Development.

Familiar, too, is the wariness between her parents and sisters concerning the event that has lain undiscussed between them for decades.

Kindled memory peels back time, to the days of crackling pumice roads and a makeshift kitchen at the mouth of the Tokaanu tunnel — and to the pivotal moment — before Tess left to pursue her musical career in London, before Maria lost the love of her life, before Jeanie, still a child, fled to be with Finn.

With its penetrating narrative eye and finely honed prose, Lynn Davidson’s story gathers to a shocking — then a tender — denouement.