Stay Buried
Jane R. Miles
HQ Fiction
It was Christmas Eve in 1974 when friends Angie (19), Brenda (18) and Amanda (18) decided to go on a fun camping trip miles from their homes in Darwin. Even though Angie’s mother had made her take her younger sister Lisa-Marie (9), who didn’t even want to go.
Author Jane R. Miles was inspired by what happened on Christmas Eve in 1974. It was the night that the Northern Territory was hit by the history-making natural disaster Cyclone Tracy. Thirty years later, when she was posted in her role with the Defence Force, a modern Darwin had emerged from the wreckage, but there were still reminders of the tragedy.
As Cyclone Tracy tore through Darwin, the four girls disappeared into the heart of the outback. No tracks. No bodies. No answers. There were rumours of a serial killer because Sally, a young teen mother from Darwin, had also disappeared from the same outback earlier that year.
It was not until thirty years later that a bedraggled woman hitched a ride into Darwin and claimed to be one of those who went missing in 1974. Holding a locket with her daughter’s picture, all she wanted to do was be reunited with her.
Sally’s daughter Von, and the families of the other missing girls, are desperate to hear what happened over all the intervening years. Authorities are being extremely guarded as they try to discover if the woman is who she claims she is.
Sally tells how she was taken by a man and put into a concrete bunker. When the cyclone’s fury struck, the four girls broke into the bunker, but a rock fall trapped them all in there.
With the narrative alternating between the 2004 events and the 1974 events, this psychological thriller explores numerous fears, and what needs to be done in order to survive extreme circumstances.
Stay Buried is a phenomenally tense first novel from Perth writer Jane R. Miles. As the mystery unravels, secrets that were long buried are revealed, and an excruciating tension builds. It is almost as if some things should ‘stay buried’.
Lezly Herbert
