When her free-spirited mother, Mae, mysteriously disappears from their home in the city, fourteen-year-old Allie is whisked away into a rainforested valley in northern NSW by an aunt she barely knows, Julia. On the dilapidated dairy farm where Julia and Mae grew up, Allie waits impatiently for her mother to call. As these anxious days pass, Allie learns about Mae's childhood, her first love, and about Mae herself through the eyes of others. Allie watches Julia, who is determined to return the valley to its natural order, replanting the trees of the forest that her grandfather cleared for grazing. Allie, trying to decipher the truth and lies that her mother has told her, is forced to come to grips with the many secrets held close in the valley. Beautifully written, Salt Rain is an extraordinary evocation of the moods of the inexorable rainforest, of families and of the secrets that can be hidden within them.
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