While holidaying at his father’s house, 12-year-old Jake explores the wild south coast of Wellington, with its high cliffs, biting winds, and its fierce seals. When Jake stumbles upon a perfectly preserved sealskin, hidden in a crevice at Red Rocks, he takes it home and, worried his father will disapprove, hides it under his bed.
Jake meets Jim, an old man who lives in a shack on the beach, and his grand-daughter Jessie, a small girl with dark eyes and a pointy face, who speaks strangely and who frolics in the water without ever feeling the cold. And who is the red-haired woman who wanders barefoot around the beaches and the streets, peering into houses? Could she be looking for her skin, as Jessie believes, so she can return to the sea? Is Jake now in danger? Red Rocks takes the Celtic myth of the Selkies, or seal people, and transplants it into the New Zealand landscape, throwing an ordinary boy into an adventure tinged with magic. With its beautiful writing and eerie atmosphere, junior readers will be thrilled and moved by this captivating story.