The Passage

In war-torn 1970s Rhodesia, Elsie is doing everything she can to keep her four daughters safe on an isolated farm surrounded by bush, dust, and the distant thunder of guerrilla conflict. Since her husband Bruce vanished without a trace, she's been both mother and sentry - locking doors, teaching the girls to run drills at the sound of the siren, and sleeping with a rifle across her knees.

But fear doesn't knock anymore - it slithers through the tall grass, lights fires near their fence line, and leaves footprints small enough to belong to a child. Someone is watching. And it isn't always clear if they come as saviour, soldier, or something else entirely.

When young Debbie vanishes into the bush, it fractures the fragile rhythm of survival. Elsie and her eldest, Gaylene, follow cryptic clues and crude drawings that lead them into the heart of the wild - and deeper into the mystery of Bruce's disappearance. What they find out there shifts everything they believed: about the war, about the man they lost, and about the ghosts that haunt both the land and their family.

As Elsie navigates a world where enemies wear familiar faces and salvation might arrive in silence, The Passage explores the weight of maternal instinct, the blurry lines between loyalty and denial, and the defiant hope that love can outlast even the cruelest conflict.

The Passage is a gripping literary suspense novel rooted in history but driven by emotion - a story of women surviving at the edge of empire, and what it costs to stand your ground when the world burns around you.