The Tally Stick by Carl Nixon

​     New Zealand is my dream destination. I’ll go there any way I can, which in reality translates to being transported literally, so that was my main attractor with this book. The Chamberlain family though gets to visit NZ in real life, it’s 1978 and they relocate there for the most typical of reasons, a job. Just grabbed their four kids and went. And then, driving in a storm along the West Coast’s rough terrain, went off the road. The rain washed away their tracks and for all intents and purposes the family vanished off the face of the earth.
    With only one relative determined to look for them and even then only sporadically, logistics and finances being what they are, the Chamberlains would have stayed gone and forgotten but for the recently unearthed remains of their eldest child. Remains that show the boy has lived for several years past 1978. It’s a mystery, especially to the kids’ aunt who has failed to find them all those years ago, but there’ nothing to be done about it now, all these years later when she gets the news.
    Back in the day especially the land held its secrets close and the dense vegetation hid much like camouflage. If someone wanted to disappear or someone wanted someone to disappear, West Coast of New Zealand was as good of a place as any and in many respects superior to most to do so.  It’s frightening really, like a nightmarish coin flip off the idyll of the off grid living. And it’s frightening to contemplate just how easily one’s life can go off track…about as easily as the car ca go off the road.
    That’s as much as I can say without giving away too much of the plot. So read for yourself to find out the meaning of the tally stick and the fates of the vanished Chamberlains. It’s a good story well told, heavy and emotionally charged and also good for an armchair trip to a far away place, albeit the darker side of it. A quick engaging read and a good introduction to a new to me author. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.