Fiona Kidman

From the author of The Infinite Air, a powerful story of women's lives spanning decades and continents. New Zealand, 1943. Violet Trench crosses Lake Rotorua with a small boy, Wing Lee, but rows back alone. Twenty years later, the same body of water is the scene of an event that will have lasting repercussions for Violet and her employees at the cafe she runs now on the lake shore. The lives of these young people will diverge, their paths to independence...

The rise and fall of the 'Garbo of the skies', as told by one of New Zealand's finest novelists. Jean Batten became an international icon in 1930s. A brave, beautiful woman, she made a number of heroic solo flights across the world. The newspapers couldn't get enough of her. In 1934, she broke Amy Johnson's flight time between England and Australia by six days. The following year, she was the first woman to make the return flight. In 1936, she made...