The Cartographer's Secret
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
A young woman's quest to heal a family rift entangles her in one of Australia's greatest historical puzzles when an intricately illustrated map offers a clue to the fate of a long-lost girl. A mesmerising historical mystery set in the Hunter Valley from bestselling author Tea Cooper for readers of Natasha Lester and Kate Morton.
1880 The Hunter Valley
Evie Ludgrove loves to map the landscape around her home - hardly surprising since she grew up in the shadow of her father's obsession with the great Australian explorer Dr Ludwig Leichhardt. So when an advertisement appears in The Bulletin magazine offering a one thousand pound reward for proof of where Leichhardt met his fate, Evie is determined to figure it out - after all, there are clues in her father's papers and in the archives of The Royal Geographical Society. But when Evie sets out to prove her theory she vanishes without a trace, leaving behind a mystery that taints everyone's lives for thirty years.
1911
When Letitia Rawlings arrives at the family estate in her Model T Ford, her purpose is to inform her great aunt Olivia of a bereavement. But Letitia is also escaping her own problems - her brother's sudden death, her mother's scheming and her own dissatisfaction with the life planned out for her. So when Letitia discovers a beautifully illustrated map that might hold a clue to the fate of her missing aunt, Evie Ludgrove, her curiosity is aroused and she sets out to discover the truth of Evie's disappearance.
But all is not as it seems at Yellow Rock estate and as events unfold, Letitia begins to realise that solving the mystery of her family's past could offer as much peril as redemption.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A young woman investigates her family's role in a decades-old mystery in Australian writer Cooper's moving latest (after The Girl in the Painting). In 1911, 25-year-old Lettie Rawlings's older brother, Thorne, dies in a boating accident. Lettie's mother, Miriam, sends her from Sydney to the family's horse-breeding estate to tell her great-aunt Olivia that she is now the estate's rightful heir, which Olivia disputes. Though despondent over Thorne's death, Lettie gets swept up in uncovering both what happened to her aunt Evie Ludgrove, who went missing nearly 20 years ago, as well as the disappearance decades earlier of real-life explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, which had obsessed her late grandfather. Since Olivia and Miriam are estranged, Olivia is initially wary of Lettie's surprise visit, but they become close as Lettie's research uncovers Evie's possible fate, and Lettie makes no claim on the estate. An 1880 narrative follows Evie, a gifted artist and promising mapmaker, who shares her father's preoccupation with Leichhardt; when a large reward is offered for proof of where Leichhardt died, Evie is determined to claim the reward for the cash-strapped farm, but she vanishes while pursuing a lead. Cooper gets to the heart of a family's old wounds, puzzles, and obsessions, while providing a luscious historical rendering of the landscape. This layered family saga will keep readers turning the pages.
