The Heart is a Star description: Layla Byrnes is balancing a demanding job, a failing marriage, and the
challenges of motherhood, all while dealing with her unstable mother's threats of self-harm. When her mother
calls just before Christmas, she doesn't follow the usual script. Instead, she tells Layla that there's something
she needs to tell her about her much-loved father, a physician who tragically died in a rescue attempt at
sea when Layla was young. Layla drops everything to rush to her childhood home on the wild west coast of
Tasmania, determined to confront her mother, find out what really happened to her father, and finally lay some
demons to rest.
The Heart of a Star is an engrossing, lyrical, and powerfully absorbing novel about the complicated and beautiful
messiness of midlife, about the ways in which we navigate an intricate and complicated world permeated by
family secrets, and about how we can uncover our true selves when we are force to face the myths that make
us.
