Lucretia is the teenaged daughter of a West Australian cray-fisherman and pearl farmer. She "learns to love in the same way a child learn words, indescribable until another fills the space one never acknowledged". In her fifteenth year, she meets a German deckhand desperate to escape the confines of cultural and linguistic boundaries, a young man, who, with his woodworking brother Michel, the saxophone-loving, weed-smoking Bill, and Lucretia's smaller and infinitely wise cousins, Arlo and Edie, create a reality so far from the mainland, it becomes a utopia covered in fish blood and Portuguese legends.
Elliot's partner was his whole world, but after Allan's death, his ghost haunts Elliot's dreams. Everyone tells Elliot to move on, but he isn't sure he can.
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It's been a year since the love of Elliot's life, Allan, passed away. Everyone thinks he should have recovered after that much time, but Allan still haunts Elliot every night. He struggles to maintain relationships with his family, and despite a coworkers interest he can't summon up the courage to date. Elliot is living for the past, because to live for the present means he'll have to live with a hole in his heart. But the question Elliot has to face chases him through his monotonous days: is mourning Allan with everything he has truly living?
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