Heartbeat of the Marru

Abby, Seth, and Frances are teenagers bound by a shared tragedy-a deadly act of environmental protest in their coastal community of Scallop Bay. All three are searching for resolution to their grief. Eighteen months after the bombing that claimed her parents, her grandmother, and her sight, Abby is still haunted by feelings of responsibility for the deaths in her family, while Seth and his sister Frances, after losing their father, are forced to live with their disturbed, narcissistic mother Claudia. While Frances has always been determined to maintain a psychological boundary with Claudia, Seth cannot relinquish his deep longing to be loved by his mother. Introverted, sensitive, and artistically gifted, Seth carries the somatic and psychic scars of his premature birth and has great difficulty negotiating social relationships. Although he possesses a powerful connection to the inner life, he cannot see that his debilitating physical symptoms are emanations of a deep resentment he feels toward his mother.

One morning in early summer Abby makes an astonishing discovery on the beach-a giant Wandering Albatross has come ashore. How did this Antarctic bird that depends upon strong wind for flight cross the windless equatorial doldrums into the north Pacific? What is the mysterious rock, pulsing with the mysterious heartbeat, that accompanies the bird?

Over the course of the summer, Abby, Seth, and Frances are drawn into dreamtime visitations with Haumanu the philosophical albatross, Ushesh the extinct short-faced megafauna bear, Poox the Great Auk, Tangakka the extinct Australian python and gatekeeper in the dreamtime, and many more. The friends discover the existence of four magical rocks which are able to traverse the boundary between earthly life and the unconscious dreamtime, and learn of the unprecedented theft of one of the rocks. In their quest to recover the rock, Abby, Seth, and Frances learn the story behind the terrorist act that killed their family members.

Using a wide cast of colorful animal and human characters, original animal mythologies, and dream visions, Heartbeat of the Marru is a story of young people struggling to create hope and myth amidst Earth's accelerating ecological crisis, a story of the healing magic that can come to us when we welcome the unconscious mysteries of Nature into our lives.