Dear Vincent

Powerful YA novel by an award-winning writer about a teenager coming to terms with the suicide of her sister.

Dear Vincent is also a novel about the power of love, and how the acquisition of inner peace requires forgiveness of ourselves and others.

17 year old Tara McClusky's life is hard. She shares the care of her paralysed father with her domineering, difficult mother, forced to cut down on her hours at school to help support the family with a part-time rest home job. She's very much alone, still grieving the loss of her older sister Van, who died five years before.

Her only source of consolation is her obsession with art — and painting in particular. Most especially she is enamoured with Vincent Van Gogh: she has read all his letters and finds many parallels between the tragic story of his life and her own.

Luckily she meets the intelligent, kindly Professor Max Stockhamer (a Jewish refugee and philosopher) and his grandson Johannes, and their support is crucial to her ability to survive this turbulent time.

NZ Post Award-wining author Mandy Hager tackles the difficult topic of suicide fearlessly, with a novel that's not afraid to go to the dark places but which resolves its story beautifully. It's uplifting and positive.

About the Author

Mandy Hager is a Wellington author and educator. She won the Esther Glen Award for Fiction for her novel Smashed and Best Young Adult Book in the NZ Post Book Awards 2010 for The Crossing. Her Blood of the Lamb trilogy was published to very high praise and was followed by the critically lauded The Nature of Ash which has been shortlisted in the NZ Post Book Awards 2013.