THE LOST CHILD

Sylvie is five. It's the 1950s and she lives in Burley Point, a fishing village South of the Coorong on Australia's wild southern coast. She worships her older brother Dunc. She tries to make sense of her brooding mother, and her moody father who abandons the family to visit The Trollop, Layle Lewis, who lives across the lagoon. It's hard to keep secrets in a small town, but when Dunc goes missing, Sylvie is terrified that she is the cause. Now her father is angry all the time; her mother won't leave the house or stop cleaning. The bush and the birds and the endless beach are Sylvie's only salvation, apart from her teacher, Miss Taylor.

In the tradition of the novels of Anne Tyler and Eudora Welty, THE LOST CHILD, is a beautifully written story about family and identity and growing up. Sylvie is a charming narrator with a big heart and a sharp eye for the comic moment. As the years go by she learns how tiny events can change entire lives, and how leaving might be the only solution when the world will never be the same again.

THE LOST CHILD is Suzanne McCourt's first novel.