Stories Behind the Storyteller

Join us at Port Macquarie Library for an evening with the Australian author Sandie Docker as she talks about writing her moving and heartfelt new book The Banksia Bay Beach Shack.

Sandie grew up in Coffs Harbour, and first fell in love with  reading when her father introduced her to fantasy books as a teenager. Her love of fiction began when she  read Jane Austen for the HSC, but it wasn’t until she was taking a translation course at university that her Mandarin lecturer suggested she might have a knack for writing. Sandie first decided to put pen to paper when living in London. Now back in Sydney with her husband and daughter, she writes every day.

Sandie is the author of The Kookaburra Creek Cafe and The Cottage at Rosella Cove. The Banksia Bay Beach Shack is her much anticipated third book.

About The Banksia Bay Beach Shack:

A year is a long time in the memory of a small town. Stories get twisted, truths become warped, history is rewritten.

When Laura discovers an old photo of her grandmother, Lillian, with an intriguing inscription on the back, she heads to the sleepy seaside town of Banksia Bay to learn the truth of Lillian’s past. But when she arrives, Laura finds a community where everyone seems to be hiding something.

Virginia, owner of the iconic Beach Shack café, has kept her past buried for sixty years. As Laura slowly uncovers the tragic fragments of that summer so long ago, Virginia must decide whether to hold on to her secrets or set the truth free.

Young Gigi and Lily come from different worlds but forge an unbreakable bond – the ‘Sisters of Summer’. But in 1961 a chain of events is set off that reaches far into the future. One lie told. One lie to set someone free. One lie that changes the course of so many lives.

Welcome to the Banksia Bay Beach Shack, where first love is found and last chances are taken.