Mackenzie Crossing by Kaye Dobbie

A family mystery to be solved is the basis for this story set in the Australian bush.

Skye is a photographer who found out when her mother died that she had another grandfather, her real one. She wants to discover what happened to him, but more particularly why he left her grandmother. She has found some clues and wants to follow them through from the last sighting of Neville Darling, her grandfather, which was in the Victorian highlands, in place called Mackenzie Crossing.

When she arrives in Elysian, the closest town, as Mackenzie Crossing was burned to the ground in the bushfires of 1939, Skye is also faced with another ghost from her past, Finn. And Finn is the policeman who has offered to take her to places so she can find the information she needs.

Finn Galloway, previously Faraday, is surprised to see Skye but has issues of his own to deal with, including his wife, from whom he is separated, and other officers from his previous unit who want information from him that he is not willing to divulge and who are making his life very difficult.

This story threads through three sections of Skye’s family history. As the story progresses we learn about Neville and what happens to him at Mackenzie Crossing during those days in February. It is a story of a man who went away to war and came back changed. He tries to be what others want him to be but then he needs to go to find out what he can do and to stop the nightmares so he leaves his family. He may find what he needs in Mackenzie Crossing.

Then we have the story of Skye, Finn and Dylan. Their story is about new love and what they are willing to do to keep that love or lose the blossoming love. Dylan, Finn’s twin, is the one hell bent on destruction. The path he takes comes back to haunt the three of them. In the current-day sequences, Skye and Finn try to work out what went wrong with their teenage love and if they can reignite that love as adults.

The story threads it way through each section and while there is a certain amount of predictability with the storyline, there are some twists that the reader may figure out as they read but I really don’t want to spoil this part of the story, especially what Skye finds at the end of her journey. This was an interesting and enjoyable read.

Reviewed by Heather