By Sue McCauley
April 24, 2024
It’s the late 1980’s, in Timaru, and Brewer Howland has killed himself. His wife, Briar, is left stranded in a rapidly changing world. The future she took for granted has been obliterated and she must invent a new one. But how does a sixty-something widow go about creating a future for herself in a world she struggles to comprehend?
The government has taken a sharp turn into unfamiliar territory, and everything seems to be rapidly changing; values, language, telephones, families, race relations, gadgets. Amid this tsunami of ‘progress’ Briar must decide how and where to live out her life. If her children and grandchildren had turned out to be lovingly bonded family cluster she’d hoped to raise, they might have been future enough. But her children are scattered and disputatious. . . .
