Author(s): Adele Lande

Aust Fiction | South Australian Authors

Can a place change a person?

Especially a place where the magical sediments of an ancient sea run in seams below the shifting sands of a desert? Three medical doctors, who find themselves in a desolate outback South Australia, are about to find out. All three have secrets-and some are darker than others.

Cari is a young Welsh doctor working in a major Australian hospital. "On the Autism spectrum", she has trouble reading others' motives. She flees her lover, Richard, to work in Manguri, a remote opal-mining town. Here maverick miners dynamite the parched ground in pursuit of the precious gemstone. Samson, a kind-hearted surgeon from India, is already contracted there.

It isn't long before Richard tracks her down-and this ex has more than one reason to try and convince her to return to the city.

With shades of The Rosie Project and the TV series The Good Doctor, the reader goes on a ride filled with black humour, intrigue and medical drama that soars across the UK, Australia and India. The magic of opal sustains and shapes. But is it enough to shed chains of guilt and recrimination?