Steele diaries

the long version

Sydney, December 1945. The war is finally over, and Annie Swift is young, beautiful, talented - and a mother. But Annie doesn't give in to the dull domestic life, she gives up her baby daughter, Zelda, instead. Zelda Steele leads a privileged, but desperately lonely life with her adoptive parents, wealthy patrons of the burgeoning avante-garde art scene. Zelda's been groomed to follow in her artist parents footsteps, and her adoptive parents are disappointed when she's not quite the prodigy they'd anticipated. It's not until her tragically early death - by suicide - that Zelda's remarkable talent is recognised. More than thirty years after her death, Zelda's daughter, Ruth - a suburban GP who enjoys her quiet, comfortable, settled life - receives a phone call from her mother's ex-lover, the internationally renowned expatriate art-critic Douglas Grant. He wants access to her mother's diaries. But as far as Ruth knows, there are no diaries. Or are there? Ruth's return to the small outback town where she grew up, and her search for her mother's diaries, becomes a journey into the past: her mother's, her grandmother's and, ultimately her own"--Publisher.6.