Connie Starr was always a difficult child. That day in 1934 when she arrived screaming into a Ballarat living room her mother knew that a little more chaos had entered the world and it would not leave until Connie did. But if Connie is difficult she is also different. From the safety of a branch high in her lemon tree where she speaks to angels she sees the world for what it is - a swirling mass of beauty and darkness of trauma and family of love and war and truth and lies - lies that might just undo her and drive her to a desperate act This ambitious complex and insightful novel intertwines numerous stories of lives from before World War 2 and beyond recreating with intimacy and breadth a world that is now lost to us. A brightly coloured patchwork quilt of everything from shoes to polio lemon trees to rivers death to life that melds into one beautiful luminous work of art
