Haunt - A Novel (Paperback)

Irene and Margaret are both married to farmers in the small seaside settlement of Seacliff, north of Dunedin, where the shadow of the large psychiatric hospital falls across the community. It is the first half of the twentieth century and the women have the kind of awkward and shy exchange arising out of mutual concern that often passed for friendship at the time. Restrained they may be, but their lives become irrevocably intertwined in a tale of ghosts, fairy stories, a neglected child and incarceration, all set against the genuine beauty of the Australian seacoast.

This first novel by an Australian playwright is set in Seacliff, a small seaside settlement that has so much history and atmosphere that it is almost a fictional character in itself. The story revolves around a horrifying incident, the discovery of an infant kept in a shed on a farm, in 1928. Ms. Bannister has incorporated the elements of a ghost story and a psychological thriller, although a quiet one, into an interesting exploration of a friendship between two women.