The White Rock: From the bestselling author of The Ballroom

A minibus travels through rural Mexico, with twelve strangers on a pilgrimage to the White Rock. A writer is traveling with her husband and young daughter, hoping to excavate a beginning from the rubble of many different endings. The novel explores conquest, resistance, betrayal, and belief, and the redemptive power of storytelling.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 18 May 2023
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

After twenty years of marriage, she and her husband are splitting up.

This information is unexpected.

There are numerous ways to recount the story.

Every story has multiple perspectives.

A minibus travels through rural Mexico. Twelve strangers are on a journey to the White Rock, an ancient and sacred site off the Pacific coast. Like many before them, over centuries and from across continents, they are irresistibly drawn here, for answers, to give thanks, to seek protection.

One of them is a writer. She is traveling with her husband and young daughter, as her faith in her marriage and the future itself is foundering. She has come to the White Rock in the hope of excavating a beginning from the rubble of many different endings.

Here she will find the echoes of many stories: of conquest and resistance, of betrayal and belief, of the many different forms of violence and love. Stories that have already unravelled, and stories that might yet illuminate a passage through these uncertain times.

An eco-novel you actually want to read

The Times

Its narrative sweep is capacious. . . It has ambition to match, musing on freedom and reciprocity [and] the redemptive power of storytelling. Impressive

Observer

Deeply moving

The i

Weight: 216g
Dimension: 128 x 196 x 21 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780241995495