j.j sheahan

Nineteen-year-old Katelyn thinks she has escaped her past and is chasing her dreams in the opal mines of outback Queensland until she is wrenched home to the tightly knit, Snowy Mountains community where she grew up. At home, Kate’s frail but feisty great-grandmother is now alone, and Kate must decide whether to face her responsibilities and the ghosts of her teenage years.Everyone in the district knows Gran, and most remember Kate as the pretty, dark-skinned girl with a dead father and scary temper who left town abruptly at fifteen. Kate seeks solace in a family heirloom—a bracelet. Beautifully crafted, it was won in an outback horse race and has been handed down the generations, from mother to daughter on the young woman’s wedding day. Gran is determined that Kate should know the adults-only stories of the women who have worn it, but Kate has little time for history. She is too busy surviving the turmoil of the present.This is a tale about strong women across six generations of an Australian family and the heirloom that links them together.It is about embracing the reality beyond romance.