The Lonely Margins of the Sea was runner up to the Duetz Medal for Fiction at the 1999 Montana book awards. Stephanie is visiting her cousin Louise, who has had a serious operation. Louise is still living in her childhood home, the one close to the lonely margins of the sea. It is the home that Stephanie visited as a child; the lonely child, always on the edge of the family circles and never allowed to play with the china dolls on the staircase. But Stephanie's immediate past is the one full of skeletons, something that becomes evident as the story unfolds ...Witty, poignant and thoroughly entertaining, this is vintage Koea.

Accolades

Shortlisted for Montana New Zealand Book of the Year Award Fiction Category 1999.

Author Biography

Shonagh Koea's notable writing career met with early success in a Woman's Weekly writing contest, in which (aged eight) she won two guineas. She went on to become a journalist and to win the Air New Zealand Short Story Award (1981), and more recently to write three short story collections as well as seven novels. Of the novels, Sing to Me, Dreamer was a finalist in the New Zealand Book Awards (1995) and The Lonely Margins of the Sea was runner-up for the Deutz Medal for Fiction (1999). Shonagh Koea has also held the University of Auckland Fellowship in Literature (1993) and the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship (1997).