The Lost Sumers of Driftwood is not just a romantic story and a mystery, but a nostalgic peek into the memories many Australians have of summer holidays by a river flowing into the sea.

Phoebe is the main character, deeply flawed in her desire to have the perfect life. Those plans fall apart soon after one of her two sisters apparently suicides while living at the family’s old holiday cottage. Phoebe bolts to that cottage, seeking solace, but what she finds instead are questions about her life and her sister’s death; as well as resumed contact with her teenage love, now living back at his family place along the river with his wife and a gaggle of friends. This cast of characters provides McCausland plenty of material, with readers given several plot threads to follow.

The flashback chapters to when Phoebe and her sisters were young, swimming and skylarking with friends in the river, are delightful.Hot summers, bushfire threat, flooding, grief, love and friendship all have a place in this novel. The mystery eventually is solved, causing even more grief in another family.

Phoebe has a prickly relationship with her parents and surviving sister and, despite a warmer understanding with her father and sister by the end of the book, she finds her mother aloof and unknowable, showing that not all fictional endings need to be happy.

Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville