Cape Lost / Joyce West

As the story of Cape Lost opens, an important new thread is about to be woven into the life of teenaged Gabrielle Allan. Home from boarding school for the summer holidays, she and Merry are once more happily on horseback. They are helping their Uncle Dunsany bring a herd of sheep to Cape Lost, the station owned by their Great-Uncle Garnet. Considered eccentric, Garnet Allan has lived all alone on the remote station bordering the sea ever since the mysterious disappearance of his young and beautiful wife many years before. Gay is curiously drawn to the homestead’s wild landscape, so different from the green, rolling hills of home, but does not expect to find herself also thrown smack into the middle of its mystery. Nor, in the subsequent years could she ever dream that her part in putting the rumors about Great-Aunt Vanessa to rest would so change the course of her life.

With Uncle Dunsany now married, Hugh deep in his doctor’s training, Eve flourishing as an art student, and Merry showing an unexpected bent for study, Gay accepts that life holds change and unforeseen turns. Not that she likes all the changes. For instance, there’s Simon from England, who has taken over her and Merry’s jobs at Drovers Road; there’s the troubling relationship with her father; and there’s the puzzle of quiet Clive Scott, a close friend of her uncle’s, and the picture of his long-dead fiancée who looks so strangely like Gay herself. However, something is growing within Gay Allan that promises to rise to meet whatever challenge is next to come.

New Zealand, 1950s.