Ancestors

Unable to escape the ancestral ghosts that haunt her, Lucy returns home to the Australian rainforest and the loving, eccentric aunt that raised her in order to confront the hauntings of her past.

Raised an orphan in the rainforest of North Queensland, Lucy McTavish grew up as a wild child. Independent, intelligent, and bored with her one-teacher school, Lucy would do anything to satisfy her desire for adventure.

When she escapes the rainforest and the ghosts that haunt her within it, Lucy continues on with her rebellious life of experimenting as she engages in communal counterculture living, casual sex, time as a gangster’s mistress, and sudden success as a tightrope artist in the circus leading her to fame, parties, and world travel.

But even as her world grows beyond her imaginations, Lucy is unable to escape the ancestral ghost of her past. Returning to the enchanted forest where she was raised, Lucy abandons the elaborate parties and her fame to spend her days in long therapy sessions with the ghosts of ancestors, finding herself on a journey for peace as she reconnects with the people of her past.

Robyn Davidson was born in Queensland, Australia. She went to Sydney in the late sixties and she has traveled extensively, living in London, New York, and India. In the early 1990s, she migrated with and wrote about nomads in northwestern India. She is now based in Melbourne, but spends several months a year in the Indian Himalayas.