The much-anticipated stand-alone sequel to The Strength of Eggshells, a winner of the NZ Booklovers Fiction Award
The Strength of Old Shale
When the bones of a mother and her child, wrapped in a Shetland lace shawl, are dug up from a forgotten graveyard, two worlds collide.
Ariel is rural tough, raised in the defiant republic that is Whangamomona. When her childhood nemesis is found decapitated in a sports car beneath the bull bars of Ariels ute, her world implodes. She has no recollection of the accident but now a court trial is looming and rumours are running hot. Ariel seeks refuge back at university in Dunedin where she prefers the company of old gold mining bones to real people.
Isbell is also tough and running from ghosts. She is a whisperer who prefers the company of horses to real people. As a young woman she has left behind depression times in Shetland and now makes her way from Ballarat, Australia to the New Zealand goldfields caring for 54 Cobb and Co coach horses in the hold of the SS India. The year is1861.
Is there a link between these two worlds wrapped in that old shale?
This is a stand-alone sequel to 'The Strength of Eggshells', winner of the 2020 NZ Booklovers Award for best adult fiction.
Winner of Best Adult Fiction Book
NZ Booklovers Awards, 2020
The Strength of Eggshells
She’s six feet tall and handles a motorbike like a professional, but Kate has insecurities that match her height and she ignores her past by pushing her fingers into her ears.
Why did her mother Jane only communicate through poetry? What became of her grandmother Meredith who travelled up the Whanganui River on a paddle steamer to marry a returned soldier in an ill-fated valley, beyond the Bridge to Nowhere? And what should Kate do about her own two-pointed love triangle? Somewhere out there are the answers; out where only her motorbike can take her.
The Strength of Eggshells explores the lives of strong rural New Zealanders, set against the fragile isolation of a farm upbringing, two world wars and a landscape that is inevitably slipping beyond reach.
Hi Cloud Ink people, just wanted to drop a quick line to say I've just finished "The strength of eggshells" after having purchased it from Kirsty at the Whangamomona hotel at her book launch. It was amazing, a beautifully crafted story. The unrest and soul-searching which was the central theme left me feeling lost like"Kate" and her family. But the conclusion pulled me back to humanity. Could you please pass on my thanks and congratulations to Kirsty for such an amazing first novel. Regards James Jeffery (the beekeeper with the brightly coloured hives)
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This is the best sort of review!! I met this young man and his bee keeping crew out for dinner at the Whangmomona Hotel. Delighted that my book is resonating with the very best of grass roots NZ. – Kirsty
About Kirsty
Kirsty Powell began her writing career under the guidance
and encouragement of Witi Ihimaera, Anne Kennedy, Robert
Sullivan and Eleanor Catton at the 2014 MIT Diploma of
Creative Writing Course, at that time running in Otara. She
went on to complete her Masters at Creative Writing at AUT
and her debut novel The Strength of Eggshells was the end
result, winning the 2020 NZ Booklovers Award for Best
Adult Fiction.
'What a remarkable first novel. This is such good story
telling and great writing ... at times confronting, but very
real and gritty.' (Marcus Hobson NZ Booklovers Reviewer).
Kirsty's latest novel The Strength
of Old Shale carries on the family saga 20 years later.
Kirsty has also had poems and short stories included in anthologies and is next keen to explore the world of children's story while concurrently researching the history of her own relative Captain David Rough for another long-form historical project. Captain Rough came to New Zealand with Governor Hobson in 1840, signed Te Tiriti at Panmure as a witness, helped select the site of Auckland CBD and stayed on as the first Harbour Master at the brand new Auckland settlement.
​
Kirsty is available for interview
For media queries, review and giveaway copies, extracts and interviews, please contact publicist Karen McKenzie, 027 693 9044, karen_m@xtra.co.nz, www.lighthousepr.co.nz
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