Finding Emma

But there I stand, with one hand resting on his shoulder, and I wonder what I was feeling in that moment. Why did I place my hand there? Was it for comfort, for reassurance, or to show that he was mine?

Emma Werner, now an old woman, is domineering, cold and difficult to love. But she has not always been so. What happened to Magdalena Johanna Emma Scholz, the bright young woman she once was? And why does she still take flowers to the grave of her first love?

Emma turns to the journals she has kept for sixty years to rediscover her old self, and to reclaim her future. They reveal the story of a survivor: a woman who suffered but never wavered, whose strength of will and self-belief helped her endure and make a life for herself and her family in a small town in the Riverina.

Praise for Finding Emma
'Emma Werner reads her early journals to discover who she really is; why some dislike her, even fear her, and why one man in particular adores her. This is a heart-wrenching tale of tragic love that consumes a life and the gracious love that heals. Which would you choose? Finding Emma is a finely and cleverly crafted migration saga set in rural NSW, encompassing two centuries and three wars. Valerie Volk's succinct prose portrays an honest, raw and riveting account of one woman's life and the mark she leaves on the lives of others.' - Rosanne Hawke, author of Marrying Ameera, The Messenger Bird and Zena Dare

'Valerie Volk once again proves a superb story-teller and creator of character. Her Emma comes alive on the page in this compelling story of sexual awakening, irresolvable grief and inner resilience. Emma's formative years in a nineteenth-century Lutheran farming community in Jindera New South Wales are vividly recorded in childhood journals, while her quest for self-understanding in later life sustains the novel's plot and holds the reader gripped by its twists and turns. In this exploration of how the past shapes the present, Volk envisages wisdom brought by experience and by the enduring consolation of faith.' - Jennifer Gribble, author of Dickens and the Bible and The Lady of Shalott

'In this well-crafted novel that shifts seamlessly between present and past, Volk introduces us to Emma, a seemingly dour old woman from a small Australian farming community who is making one last entry in the diaries she has kept since her youth. But we soon discover there is nothing rustic or simple about the life of Emma. Volk leads us with dextrous skill through the complex layers of pain, passion, tragedy and hope that lie behind the once attractive young woman who chose not to smile for her wedding photograph.' - Dr Mark Worthing, historian and author, Iscariot

Valerie Volk is an award-winning Adelaide writer of poetry, verse novels, short stories and longer fiction. She is fascinated by the perennial question 'What if …?' and is a self-confessed voyeur of other people's lives. Family history has been the inspiration for several of her fictional novels. Valerie loves all music - especially classical, opera and jazz - travel and cats, not necessarily in that order, but she loves writing most of all. Finding Emma is her twelfth book.