A Single Breath

Travel Guide

Setting is an integral part of any book and with A Single Breath, it is as much a character as the others in the story. It is the sea in Dorset which sweeps Jackson away and which starts Eva’s journey across the world to Tasmania. Then the (fictional) setting of Wattleboon (in reality Bruny Island) came into its own with the remote locations, the rough sea, Saul’s shack and of course Jackson’s past.

The descriptions of the island, as Eva mental torment grows, are so stunning that they show the extent of her aguish even more –

She located Shoal Bay in the south-east corner of the island.

The crossing only takes twenty-five minutes, but by the time the ferry docks, Eva feels as if she’s arriving at the edge of the earth.

This is a novel all about secrets and the power that both keeping them and discovering then dealing with them can have over us.

The descriptions are STUNNING. As a reader, we get to go fishing and diving in Tasmania, meeting sea dragons, trying free diving and finding out about the importance of the shack –

“Owning a shack is a Tassie thing. They’re bolt holes, a  place to disappear to when you’re craving some space, some wilderness”

Bruny Island/Wattleboon

Bruny Island on which Wattleboon is based truly must be stunning if these descriptions are anything to go by –

“.. a sea dragon drifts before then. Its body is a reddish colour and looks as if it’s been lit from the inside, electric pinpricks of blue and yellow spotting and striping its surface.”

Then, a moment of calm in a sea of swimming lies, wrapping themselves around her and dragging her further down into an abyss…

Eva stands on the deck of the shack, breathing in the small so familiar to her now: salt air, eucalyptus, a briny tinge of seaweed.