The Burning IslandPaperback, 13 July 2021

A father's obsession. A daughter's quest

Eliza Grayling has lived in Sydney all her life, born there some 32 years ago, when the colony itself was still an infant. Too tall, too stern--too old, now--for marriage, she lives with her reclusive father, a former lieutenant and governor's aide. Eliza watches over him, in case he injures himself while drunk. There is a shadow in his past, she knows. Something obsessive. Something to do with a man who bested him decades earlier.

Then Srinivas, another figure from that dark past, offers Joshua Grayling the chance for a reckoning. The plan entails a sea voyage to the far south and an uncertain, possibly violent, outcome. Eliza is horrified: such a thing is out of the question for an elderly man, let alone a helpless drunkard who also happens to be blind.

Unable to dissuade her father from his outlandish quest, Eliza begins to understand she may be forced to go with him. Then she sees the ship they will be sailing on. And in that instant, the voyage of the Moonbird becomes Eliza's mission too.