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At the start of a summer's day, Ward is waiting on the beach. His friend, Alex, wants him to come to a party at Alison's where there'll be girls and drinks and the possibilities of fun. But Ward is shy and self-conscious and struggling to move from under the weight of his powerful father. He'd rather wait on the beach for the surf to come up. As the sun moves towards its highest point and the girls' laughter carries along the wind towards Ward, the tide changes and Ward is faced with a dramatic event that will change his life forever. This beautiful and intense coming-of-age story captures perfectly the discomforts and challenges of being 15 years-old with the world stretching out in front of you. Sensual, heady, as though dazed by the heat of her pages, Gunn slowly unfolds a tale of danger and sexuality, of mothers and sons and the fathers who rule them, and of the sea.

Twelve-year-old Janey is on vacation with her mother and father, and her younger brother Jim, at their beach house on the Mahurangi Peninsula in New Zealand. Her parents, who are on the verge of divorce, sit around in the back yard all day drinking whiskey, and Janey and Jim are left to their own devices. There's plenty of time to play and dream, but when their mother starts an affair with a local boatman, and their father turns increasingly to alcohol, ignoring his children almost as much as his wife, things begin moving towards a fateful conclusion.