'It's as if I am slowly sinking in the water, just occasionally making it back to the top for a gulp of air - to a sort of memory of what life can be - what life SHOULD be - and then down down down I go again. And each time the surfacing gets harder and harder and requires a greater feat of will, kicking and turning and fighting against the undertow....'

The only child of two famous but self-absorbed artists, Zelda Steele is adopted by her parent's patrons when she is just a baby. Great things are expected of this privileged young woman, but at twenty- seven Zelda is dead, leaving two young children and a body of work that only hints at her promise.

Years later, Zelda's daughter Ruth returns to her childhood home to find the diaries her mother is rumoured to have kept. What they reveal will send Ruth on a journey into the past - and transform her future in ways she can't even begin to imagine.

Weaving together the narratives of three very different women, living in vastly different times, The Steele Diaries paints a rich and evocative portrait of the Sydney art scene from the thirties to the seventies, and examines the eternal conflict between maternity and creativity, motherhood and self.