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Kaye Kelly |
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A Secret Mind Ever since she fell and hit her head, little Libby Budd has been plagued by violent seizures, strange visions and premonitions. With her behaviour becoming more erratic, and at the urging of the family’s mysterious lodger, Arnold Price, Libby’s newly widowed mother faces a tough decision: should she have her daughter committed to the lunatic asylum on Hokitika’s Misery Hill—the home of the dead, the mad and the bad? Meanwhile, storekeeper Henry Bramwell and his Chinese wife, Mai, familiar from Kaye Kelly’s Cross the River to Home are opening a shop in Hokitika. Henry’s old friend, Jimmy, returns from Australia to help out with the venture, his glamorous fiancée and sharebroker brother in tow. But are Claire and Elmer all they seem? And what secrets are being hidden by Anne Gilpin, the new barmaid at the Golden Age, who swears to have turned her back on the demon drink? |
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Cross the River to Home Set in the 1870s, this is the story of an impossible love between a half-Chinese woman, Mai, and Henry, a young English immigrant who has come to the South Island of New Zealand in search of his sister. She is now living in Charleston, married to a local doctor, to whom Mai takes her grandfather for eye surgery. With family ties, racial prejudice and the local community conspiring against any match between Henry and Mai, their futures promise to be bleak. But perhaps Mai’s grandfather is not the only one destined to see more clearly… |
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Random House NZ ISBN 9781869417819 Available in NZ bookstores. Overseas: The Nile Online |
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Random House NZ ISBN 1869416309 Available in NZ bookstores. Overseas: The Nile Online |
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Kelly skilfully brings not only the time and place but the social setting of the story to life. Anyone interested in historical fiction will enjoy this book immensely. Sophie Fern, Otago Daily Times |
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All characters are clearly and convincingly drawn in Kaye Kelly’s page-turner A Secret Mind. Mark Peters, New Zealand Listener |