In the silence she could hear the oncoming hum, like a large flock approaching. She didn't want to hear his story; she'd had enough of them. Tess is on the run when she's picked up from the side of the road by lonely middle-aged father Lewis Rose. With reluctance, she's drawn into his family troubles and comes to know a life she never had. Set in Masterton at the turn of the millennium, Tess is a gothic love story about the ties that bind and tear a family apart. "I love novels about amelioration, about people trying to mend things and fix themselves. Kirsten McDougall's brave and brilliant Tess is one of these. A novel of tender observation and deftly judged suspense, Tess imagines what it might mean for someone to really know what goes on inside others" —Elizabeth Knox