Publisher's Synopsis
A powerful debut, harmonising Australian-born and immigrant voices, contrasting and connecting their thoughts and struggles.
What if moving to a crumbling Australian coastal town meant giving up your only dream?
In 1974, Nayeema reluctantly leaves Sydney's inner city to move to Burraboo, a tired coastal town, with her husband Fawzy. In doing so, Nayeema surrenders her only dream, but once there she falls under the sway of new infatuations.
On a houseboat in the pristine bay nearby, she sells the comforting food of her Egyptian childhood, but keeps her income a secret from her husband. Through this act of defiance and independence, Nayeema unwittingly unlocks a mysterious connection with her new land.
Then everything changes when a local teenage girl goes missing and racial tensions ignite in the town.
As Nayeema's houseboat arrangements become more entangled, her yearnings must fight her own history, the impetuous jinn and each other, to finally reveal the mystery of the strange birthmark that prickles on her chest.
