Rebecca Mascull

Isolated by her inability to converse with her family, her only friends are a group of spirits that she alone can sense. However, her life is transformed by the arrival of Lottie, a teacher who shows her how to communicate using finger spelling. Her friendship with Lottie and her brother Caleb leads Adeliza to South Africa at the time of the Boer War, where the truth about the visitors is unveiled.

The Visitors is a fascinating tale of friendship, adventure, love, and the supernatural. Rebecca worked in education before taking up writing and was inspired by her experiences of working with deaf teenagers and by the story of Laura Bridgman, a deaf-blind girl that was taught to ‘speak’ with her fingers at the Perkins Institute in Boston in the 19th century.