• Carl Nixon is a New Zealand novelist, short story writer and playwright. He has written four novels and a number of original plays which have been performed throughout New Zealand. He is published by Penguin in New Zealand and Australia, but has never been published in the US
• In The Tally Stick, an upper-class English family arrives in the wilderness of New Zealand only for both parents to be killed in car crash
• Trying to survive alone in the wilderness, their children are transformed by the harsh landscape. They are taken in - kidnapped, really - by two locals who keep them for free labor. The authors explores the siblings' differing responses to their radically changed lifestyle
• When the remains of one of the children is found 30 years after the accident, the children's British aunt tries to solve the mystery of what happened to the family
• A thrilling page-turner and novel of edge-of-the-seat suspense put together like a jigsaw puzzle, with the landscape and weather of the West Coast of New Zealand given a prominent role
• This is highly accessible, commercial fiction
• Film rights sold to Blondini Brothers, a producer from New Zealand