Beneath the Mother Tree by D.M. Cameron

Title: Beneath the Mother Tree

Author: D.M. Cameron

Genre: Mystery – with a touch of Fantasy

Opens: On the wind, Ayala heard a tune so sweetly mournful it made her toes curl in the sand.

Blurb:

On a small island, something sinister is at play. Resident alcoholic Grappa believes it’s the Far Dorocha, dark servant of the Faery queen, whose seductive music lures you into their abyss. His granddaughter Ayla has other ideas, especially once she meets the mysterious flute player she heard on the beach. Riley and his mother have moved to the island to escape their grief. But when the tight-knit community is beset by a series of strange deaths, the enigmatic newcomers quickly garner the ire of the locals. Can Ayla uncover the mystery at the heart of the island’s darkness before it is too late?

My thoughts: BENEATH THE MOTHER TREE started very slowly; nothing really happens straight away and yet from the very first page there’s a hint of something not quite right. This sense of wrongness increased as the story progressed until it got to the stage where you know darn well bad things are happening – but you can’t explain what they are.

Ayla has lived on an island off the coast of Queensland for her whole life, she has grown up with her grandfather’s tales of Irish myths and also the history of both white settlement and, through her friend Mandy and her relatives, Indigenous traditions and stories. This blend of myth and fact has formed her outlook at life.

The story opens with Ayla alone on the beach when she hears a flute playing – it plays so beautifully that it lures her to come closer. She remembers a conversation with her grandfather, an alcoholic, where he told her that recent imagined omens were saying that something bad is coming. She also remembered his story of how her grandmother was seduced by a flute playing fairy. Whilst she dismisses her grandfather’s warnings because they live in Australia not Ireland – there are no little people – good or evil here. Ayla still goes and hides in the large tree that is called the mother tree until she no longer hears the flute.

The flute player is not an Irish fairy – he is Riley. Riley has just moved to the island with his mother Marlise after the death of his stepfather. Marlise is a world expert on mosquitos and the islanders want to rid the swamp of mosquitoes as their presence is stopping the tourists from coming over to the island.

Then the deaths start – animal and human. Deaths in the past and deaths in the present have to be solved to prevent deaths in the future.

The story is told from mostly the viewpoints of Ayla and Riley; and every so often from the view point of Marlise. Now there is mind you don’t want to spend much time in!! Gradually Ayla and Riley work out the mysterious goings on, and Irish mythology, Aboriginal traditions and history blend to protect the island from its doom in an edge of the seat climax.

I loved Ayla and Riley they were so focused and protective of each other. Ayla’s Aboriginal friend Mandy was lovely too. And Marlise? Let’s just say she came alive on the pages and her madness, or was it her sanity? Was amazing to behold.

BENEATH THE MOTHER TREE was a fabulous debut novel. The author D.M. Cameron lived in SE Queensland and based her island on islands in Moreton Bay and coastal land between the Brisbane and Logan Rivers. She grew up with people of the Quandamooka Nation and used their traditions and beliefs in her story. BENEATH THE MOTHER TREE is her love story to these people, her friends.

BENEATH THE MOTHER TREE takes you on a journey from normal day to day living to oh my goodness this can’t be happening very slowly, adding to the tension word by word, page by page until you at a climax where people are fighting for their very lives. Amazing. I would certainly read any more books written by her, and hope this is the first of many.

Rating: Excellent Stuff– a real page turner and hard to put down. I carved out extra reading time just so I could finish it. This book got carted into the bathroom with me, read over meals, read at work, and/or kept me up late at night. If this author has more work, I will certainly read it.

Want to know more about author D.M. Cameron? Click Here

With thanks to MidnightSun Publishing and the author for my copy to read and review.

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