The Strength of Eggshells

Debut novel, out now

She’s six feet tall and handles a motorbike like a professional, but Kate has insecurities that match her height and she ignores her past by pushing her fingers into her ears.

Why did her mother Jane only communicate through poetry? What became of her grandmother Meredith who travelled up the Whanganui River on a paddle steamer to marry a returned soldier in an ill-fated valley, beyond the Bridge to Nowhere? And what should Kate do about her own two-pointed love triangle? Somewhere out there are the answers; out where only her motorbike can take her.

The Strength of Eggshells explores the lives of strong rural New Zealanders, set against the fragile isolation of a farm upbringing, two world wars and a landscape that is inevitably slipping beyond reach.

About Kirsty

Kirsty Powell grew up east of Eketahuna in an isolated rural community in the North Wairarapa. She now lives in rural South Auckland and splits her time between farming, writing and contracting as an Occupational Health Physiotherapist to local industries. She has also studied psychology, history, philosophy and completed a Master of Creative Writing. She has travelled by motorbike on several continents and by bicycle across Europe.

The Strength of Eggshells combines many of her loves. She particularly enjoyed researching the history of the returned soldier settlement blocks in the Mangapurua Valley and meeting the descendants and one of the original settlers who is now in her nineties and appears in the novel as herself – a teenage girl in the 1940s.

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A message from Kirsty:

A big thank you to every one who attended my Auckland launches.  Great to see The Strength of Eggshells at No.3 on the weekly book sellers list!