Merinda's Mark (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780994248596)

Merinda's Mark is a tribute to all who approach their teen years with anxieties and insecurities in their search for identity. Merinda's Mark also focuses on the paradigm that many of our fears are conquerable when we face and embrace them.

It is a story of friendship and acceptance, with the quick changing fusion of emerging sexual attraction while the bedrock of our childhood is still close.

Merinda's Mark elaborates upon mixed heritage between white and Aboriginal Australians. Many Australians live white lives but have more in common with the first inhabitants and their Dreaming than they acknowledge or are indeed aware of. Merinda embodies a cross-cultural heritage within herself and that can be pretty confusing, especially when overlaid by normal teen concerns and impeded by a condition like claustrophobia..

Merinda's Mark combines a grave concern with our land and the inevitable creep of development and all it entails for both environment and for first Australian heritage. Most teens today have been educated to be aware of environmental concerns as well as embracing a respectful perception of Aboriginal traditions. Most white Australians have not however, had direct experiences with Aboriginal Dreaming or historical customs related to the land.

Merinda's Mark seeks to change that for the characters by their direct action and intervention: by solving a family mystery, Merinda's Mark empowers its characters to succeed in a land corruption scandal.

Merinda's Mark weaves many threads into a cohesive whole and sums up though its imagery, the joy found in embracing the composite identities, myths and dreamings that makes us Australian.