STARS AT OKTOBER BEND, THE

'Words, caught me by surprise,' she says, 'took me in their rushing up draught, took me from the page into the clear mid-air.'

The Stars at Oktober Bend is the lyrical story of the strength of the human spirit from a powerful voice in Australian YA.

A captivating story about Alice, who is reaching out to express herself through her beautiful-broken words, and Manny who is running to escape his past. When they meet they find the beginnings of love and healing.

Alice is fifteen, with hair as red as fire and skin as pale as bone, but something inside her is broken. She has acquired brain injury, the result of an assault, and her words come out slow and slurred. But when she writes, heartwords fly from her pen. She writes poems to express the words she can't say and leaves them in unexpected places around the town. Manny was once a child soldier. He is sixteen and has lost all his family. He appears to be adapting to his new life in this country, where there is comfort and safety, but at night he runs, barefoot, to escape the memory of his past. When he first sees Alice, she is sitting on the rusty roof of her river-house, looking like a carving on an old-fashioned ship sailing through the stars.

Through her lyrical writing, Glenda reveals that people are always more than they seem.