A Place to Stand

“I'll never go back,” she said. “Never.”

Sandra McLeod arrived in New Zealand as a child, with her British family. It was 1954.

But the family's hopes for a new and better life faltered in the raw timber town and at sixteen Sandra fled. All she took with her were numbness and denial. Fifteen years later, a letter arrives and Sandra, now a successful real estate agent, knows she must go back. Back to her mother's vacant eyes and the secrets of the McLeod family. Back to unpick her past and to learn about loss, grief, mothering — and perhaps a chance of finding home. 

Set in Kawerau, a small town on the volcanic plateau, this poignant novel explores the cost of migration and what it means to find deep connection with place.