The River Wife

THE RIVER WIFE A grave, tender and beautifully told modern fable about conservation and the environment for our times.

Heather Rose is a talented Australian novelist, best known for her second novel, the awardwinning The Butterfly Man, about the disappearance of Lord Lucan in 1974. With The River Wife, she has crafted a beautiful, modern fable, which is at its core about love, but in a broader sense this love is a metaphor for the relationship humans have with the environment, and how important conservation is in this day and age.

It also raises the question of what is our human connection to this land, Australia?

Other than in Indigenous storytelling, there is a lack of ownership and belonging in postcolonial Australian writing. Heather Rose poses the question: What would happen if we really 'listened' to the land, and the natural environment around us?

The River Wife tells the story of the part-human, part-fish river wife whose duty it is to tend the river. Against nature, she falls in love with a human man, Wilson James, not unlike her mother before her. This love story speaks of human desire, melancholy, heartbreak, loneliness, of mothers and daughters, kinship, sacrifices made for love and wisdom gained from the passing of time. But on a greater scale, The River Wife immerses us in the landscape, and portrays what happens when we interfere with the natural order of things.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Heather Rose is Chairman and founder of Green Team Australia, partnered with Green Team USA in New York, specialists in advertising and community engagement on environmental and health issues. She is also a Telstra Tasmanian Business Woman of the Year and her business has won over 24 international creative awards since 1999. Heather is the author of two novels, White Heart and The Butterfly Man. The Butterfly Man was longlisted for the 2007 IMPAC Awards, shortlisted for the Nita B Kibble Award in 2006 and won the 2006 Davitt Award for the Crime Fiction Novel of the Year. www.heatherrose.com.au

PRAISE FOR THE BUTTERFLY MAN

‘Rose’s lyrical melding . . . is masterful. Intriguing as the real-life events of the Lucan story are, Rose transforms it into something far more substantial.’ Liam Davison, The Australian

‘The success of this exquisitely crafted novel is that it is difficult to remind oneself that it is a work of imagination.’ Christopher Bantick

‘a wholly satisfying and very moving novel, which offers an imaginative insight into a stillnotorious crime.’ Katrina Beard, Sisters in Crime

‘a haunting blend of spirituality, landscape and grief’ Ian McFarlane on White Heart, The Canberra Times

The River Wife
Allen & Unwin
Author: Heather Rose
Literary Fiction (Australian)
ISBN: 9781741757422
RRP: $29.99