As the Australis Star cruises for nineteen days from Sydney to Honolulu, the lives of five passengers are changed forever.

Genevieve hates cruises; all that lounging around quaffing cocktails and too much food. But Peter, her husband, has bought this one for her after the worst year of her life, and she couldn’t tell him she didn’t want to go. Still traumatized after a family tragedy, both of them have gone into hiding behind small talk and silence.

A cruise is the last place where Genevieve could imagine making a friend, but when she meets Thomas, a morbidly obese man inhabiting a patch of shade on the deck, she finds him easy to talk to. Thomas himself has a past — one which has poisoned the only relationship he cared about.

The two form a gentle friendship and a kind of healing takes place, until Peter drops a bombshell. By the end of the cruise, all of their lives will have changed.

Kath Engebretson's 'Nineteen Days' is a story of unexpected friendships, facades that people wear, and what happens when they break. But above all, it is a story of how love manages to seep through the cracks and find a way.

Petrified