ONE NIGHT AT SILVER LAKE (Penguin Random House 2026) by Katherine Scholes is a fascinating insight into life in the 1960’s in the dual settings of Tanzania (gaining independence) and Tasmania. The author’s work is informed by her own experiences of growing up in Tanzania, the child of a European bush doctor who ran mobile clinics across the plains.
Similarly, the main character Sara is the daughter of doctors who work in the bush, and Sara, when not at boarding school, makes friends with Maasai children and sees them sporadically throughout the year while travelling with her parents. She is an independent and curious child who has adapted to the harsh living conditions. By the time she is a young adult, she is resilient, skilled and determined to live life on her terms.
But this changes when she falls in love with Richard, a mining executive, who has very different ideas of what his fair-skinned wife should be – how she should dress, her behaviour, her cooking, her socialising and her friendships. He loves her but, in the way of the times, with conditions attached.
Mostly Sara copes with these constrictions because they still live in her beloved country of birth and she frequently seizes the opportunity to hike or explore or visit her friends.
Both hope for a baby, and when it’s revealed (early on) that Richard cannot father children, his reaction is angry, overwrought and demanding. No, there will be no adoption. No, there will be no sperm donation. Not even from his own brother, who carries similar genes. Sara is disappointed, desperate to widen their family and unsure how she will cope if she is to remain forever childless.
This book was never predictable. Life-changing events occur at every turn and they were not what I expected. In particular, the choices characters made seemed unusual or out of character, but then subsequently proved to mirror their real personalities. Too much detail would be a spoiler, but there are relocations, deaths, love, loss, friendships and adventure. While Sara’s marriage fractures, her quest for motherhood leads her back to her roots of moving with the seasons like nomadic herding families on the Serengeti – a journey to Silver Lake that ends in tragedy, an encounter with a stranger she cannot forget, and the special power that she finds in heartbreak, family, hope, identity and home.
A mix of commercial and literary fiction, this book surprised me with its reveals – not twists exactly, but unexpected decisions by the characters that took the narrative to places not even on my radar. Each of these surprises is a pleasant hook that drives the narrative forward and brings the reader closer to Sara and her yearning desire.
For lovers of nature and the environment, this book is a treasure trove of imagery, research and examples of both flora and fauna native to Tanzania and to Tasmania, with questions about the indigenous inhabitants of both places. Setting is key, and Scholes writes in an evocative and tender way about landscape, relationships, physical hardship, emotional conflicts and how individuals can choose to remake their lives according to what they want rather than what they have been given.
Lots of moral and ethical questions would make this a good bookclub pick.