Jasmine is out to shock. Electric clothes, electric hair, wired behaviour: anything to get approval from the cool kids at school — and admit it, Jaz — to force her parents to take notice.

 

Preoccupied with their own problems, her parents can’t see how Jaz’s desire to fit in is spinning her out over the edge. Sometimes — hard to confess to her new friends — the only real support Jaz gets is from Gi-Gi, her great-grandmother.

 

You might say Gi-Gi has a kind of sixth sense. She’s given Jaz the diary of their ancestor Maggie, to read aloud during their weekly visits. Maggie, at the same age as Jaz, had to migrate from the Shetland Islands with her family. Where to? Nineteenth-century Stewart Island — a wild, lonely, brutal place, that tested Maggie’s spirit sorely. Her diary seems to speak directly to Jaz with dazzling clarity.

 

In her latest novel, award-winning writer Joanna Orwin links the past and present beautifully. Her writing is as clean and brisk as the salt spray and fresh winds.