About the author… Holly Throsby

She’s a songwriter and musician from Sydney, and this is her second novel.

This novel was inspired by…

”A bizarre unsolved Australian mystery from 1948, the complexity of relationships between mothers and daughters, how people and communities deal with trauma, and small towns on the south coast of New South Wales.”

The most challenging thing about writing it was… “Maintaining my own patience. I follow instinct when I write and let the story unfold, rather than planning it all out first. I love working this way, but it takes a long time to work out how everything will weave together. There will be a week or two of very puzzled feelings, followed by a wonderful moment of revelation. That cycle goes on until the story is finished.” I’m fascinated by small-town Australian life because… ”I love the connections, the constraints, the particular type of laconic humour. Someone wrote of my first book that it had a ‘wry affection for a peculiarly Australian dagginess’. That made me laugh – and it’s definitely true.”