When she returns to Wilambra following her mother's death, Anthea Matheson expects a difficult few weeks sorting through a lifetime of possessions, but a conversation with the family solicitor delivers a stunning revelation. The vast family property is legally hers, not newly inherited, but hers for decades since the death of her brother.
Her mother's will instructed that Wilambra be sold and the proceeds distributed to charities, yet the property has never belonged to her mother. Anthea discovers the estate's financial records don't add up. Employees are unpaid. Deposits for the sale of cattle and other produce don't appear in known accounts, and a mysterious bank account seems to have handled the property's income for years. Somewhere in the paperwork is a story someone has gone to considerable lengths to conceal.
With her close friend and neighbour, Sam Treloar, helping clear the homestead, what begins as an awkward homecoming soon develops into a partnership. While Anthea tackles running a working property, Sam becomes fascinated by Wilambra's past as recorded in the journals kept by its former owners. For generations, those men recorded both mundane and significant details of their daily lives. Buried among observations of work and family life are tantalising references to fish traps somewhere along the mangrove-lined coast. Why were they never mentioned? Who used them, and why were they so carefully forgotten? To find out, Anthea and Sam follow clues across mudflats and into the mangroves to what appear to be the remains of an ancient fish trap. But a nearby discovery is far more disturbing: bones.
The police are called. Inspector Thompson leads a team sent to investigate. As he pieces together evidence, Anthea and Sam continue their own research. Old rumours begin to surface. Memories preserved by aging workers take on a new significance. A mysterious American who disappeared, a wartime plane crash, strange activity connected to the fish traps, and secrets within the Cavendish family suggest a disturbing story. But the closer they get to the truth, the more complicated it becomes. Secrets about marriages, loyalties, betrayal, and a prominent family's reputation are uncovered. Anthea must decide whether to protect the family she barely understood or discover what really happened on the land she inherited.
Those bones in the mangroves belong to someone.
Someone whose story may be entangled with the Cavendish family's.
The truth might be the final chapter of a story that has been waiting to be written for decades.
As Christmas approaches, Anthea, Sam, and Inspector Thomson must confront a dark question that haunts Wilambra:
Who died there-and who made sure the truth stayed buried?
This is a contemporary rural mystery with a strong sense of place, family secrets, friendship, an unexpected inheritance, and a crime stretching back decades.
