Zelda Steele is destined for great things. The talented daughter of two celebrity artists, raised by wealthy art patrons in Sydney's sixties art scene, artistic success is hers for the taking. But Zelda dies young, leaving only the possibility of the artist she could have become-as well as two young children and the rumour of secret diaries.

Years later, Zelda's daughter Ruth returns to her hometown to search for those diaries. What she finds there takes her deep into the mysteries of her parents' and grandparents' lives, and shifts the foundations of her own.

Weaving together the lives of three very different women across three eras, The Steele Diaries is a rich triptych of the tensions between ambition and responsibility, art and family, the past and present and future.