Dana Da Silva in-conversation with Jessica Mudditt

Grace, a young woman suffering from sexual and violent intrusive thoughts, as well as recurrent urinary tract infections, feels both mentally and physically broken. It’s a relief when she’s diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder because it means she’s not going crazy like she’d suspected.

But then her feelings towards her husband become increasingly platonic and the culmination of everything gets too much. On a whim, with her eyes closed, Grace spins a plastic globe that she’s had since childhood and her finger lands on South America. She sets off for Argentina, leaving behind her job, husband, stepson, Labrador, and their home near the beach.

In five months, while exploring 14 countries, Grace has exotic adventures and love affairs, learning to trust herself again in the process. Finally, she thinks she knows who she is and what she wants, but returning home to Australia, to reality, puts this to the test.

Part travel memoir, part spiritual guide, and part erotica, The Shift is a wide-ranging personal odyssey.

Dana Da Silva is a single mum of two based in Sydney, Australia. Having completed her journalism degree in 2011, she’s spent the past decade working in PR across both the public and private sectors. These days, Dana’s a part-time media adviser, and, on her days off from the corporate world, an aspiring indie author with big dreams. Creative writing, including poetry, is her elixir of joy. She considers putting pen to paper to be an exquisite art, free therapy, and a form of meditation. The Shift is her debut book.

Jessica Mudditt is the founder of Hembury Books and the author of two memoirs, Our Home in Myanmar and Once Around the Sun.