This is a story of lies and painful truths, of secrets and silences. It is Stockton, New South Wales, Australia in 1902 and Mary is dead – “a great and patient sufferer” so they said. But who was she? Her voice from the grave is interwoven with those of family and friends to help piece together a truth. Was she simply a wife and mother born on the goldfields of colonial New South Wales? Her daughter Blanche will find that it is quite to the contrary. In the end, perhaps DNA will tell the whole story. While the characters and places are real, the incidents are either used fictitiously or are the product of the author's imagination.