The Lost Climber’s Legacy
ISBN
Description
One busy afternoon in her studio, Auckland fashion designer Deirdre Smythe receives a phone call from the police.
The remains of a mountaineer, killed 30 years earlier in a fall on Mount Tasman, have been discovered on a glacier in New Zealand’s Southern Alps. The body could be that of a ski-mountaineering instructor who was Dee’s one-time lover.
While coping with her grown daughter, who suffers from a mysterious ailment, and her demented mother, who resides in a rest home, Deirdre’s memory is jogged by the phone call to reconstruct the events around the time of the alpine disaster, and recreate her relationship with her ex-husband and climbing mates into an exotic, award-winning wearable artwork while she envisages her future.
About the author
Historian Julia Millen’s writing career spans more than 40 years, with notable titles including Dilemma of Dementia (1985), her moving account of caring for her mother who suffered from Alzheimer’s Disease.
She is the author of the biographies Ronald Hugh Morrieson (1996), and Guthrie Wilson: soldier, writer and educator (2006), as well as numerous corporate histories, including Salute to Service: the history of the Royal NZ Corps of Transport (1997); Bell Gully Buddle Weir, its story (1990); and Kirkcaldie & Stains; a Wellington story (2000).
Julia lives in Wellington with her husband, author Tom McGrath, with whom she shares her main hobby—tango dancing.