Rachel is nineteen, depressed and forced to do another TAFE course to keep receiving the dole. With just enough cash for bond, she leaves her alcoholic mother and kowtowed father behind in country town Wauchope for the steel city of Newcastle. She moves into decrepit Havelock Hostel with fifty fringe dwellers. Soon she is introduced to The Ghost Of Havelock with an important message for her.

 

Unconventional therapist, Leona, exposes Rachel’s drinking, smoking, apathy, and midday sleep-ins as becoming just like her mother - a confronting realisation. She attempts the affirmation from Leona: ‘They were doing the best they could with what they knew and believed’ with lordly landlady Maria. After fifty recitals she doubts it will ever work. And her persistent ghost encourages her to write her new life story.

 

Leona gives her the gumption to stand up to the landlady, ditch her vengeful best friend, and confront her mother on the years of emotional abuse. Leona also urges her to acknowledge the damage of ‘nastissism’. When she attempts to tell her mother how she really feels, her mother reveals her childhood sexual assault. This has a significant impact on Rachel allowing her to finally understand and have empathy for her mother.

 

However, years later, Leona highlights the anaphora in Rachel’s life, the repetition: principal Pringle as a repeat of her critical mother; the work-place bully as so-called best-friend Gretchen in disguise; and her unhappiness with her partner a mirror of the dreaded ex-boyfriend. When she finally admits defeat, Rachel quits her teaching job to fully commit to the inner-work. She’s on a mission to break anaphora. The sabbatical near North ‘Heaven’ Beach introduces a flirtatious chef, affirmation reps, and the Indigenous Spirit of Dragon Rock all showing her the way to experience life unbridled. The ultimate goal – to attract people who can reciprocate kindness and support.

 

Six months later, Rachel’s mother suffers a severe stroke from which she won’t recover. On her mother’s deathbed, she recites Leona’s mantra: ‘She was doing the best she could with what she knew and believed’. Early the next morning her mother visits her in spirit where, for the first time, unconditional love transpires between them.

 

Rachel is hopeful she will forge a close relationship with her father offering to move in and help. When he rejects the idea, Rachel is gutted but accepts that this is the best he can do with what he knows and believes. With a little help from Archangel Michael, who slices through those steel-like familial webs, she moves on knowing she’ll find her family elsewhere.

 

Rachel is free to let go of the past thus rendering her free to find true love, beginning of course, with herself. Upon meeting her new love interest, we discover the twist in the novel – that the ones we need the most are often closer than we think.

 

BREAKING ANAPHORA is for anyone who believes in ghosts, breaking cycles, and the healing power of self-love but also appreciates a bit of Aussie rock music, na na na na na na na na thunder!