During the Depression, young Harper Flute and her family are barely getting by. The dry, dusty farmland in Australia where they have settled yields no crops, and Harper's well-meaning father is too full of dreams, and later bitterness and sorrow, to pay it any mind. The land yields in its own way, however, to Harper's younger brother, Tin. At the age of 4, Tin begins to burrow. He starts by digging holes, but soon the holes become tunnels, and not long after Tin slips beneath the surface of the earth into his own subterranean world, coming up into the light only when strong reason warrants.

As the now young adult Harper looks back on her childhood, she tells in a voice as lyrical as her name how Tin's ever-more-shadowy presence and her family's harsh struggle for survival were forces that shaped her own outlook and the lives of her family members through those difficult years.

Sonya Hartnett's beautifully written, highly original story is a dance of dark and light, told in the voice of a young woman who never loses hope or heart.

Megan Schliesman
July 2002