Publisher's Synopsis
A collection of my best short stories - previously published in both mainstream and literary magazines - others published for the first time. Everything from a pig hunting story to a fun romance. Literary stories, commercial fiction, and shorter vignettes. Included in the collection is my first published short story, a fishing yarn, Sam's Kingie, and for the first time a new fishing yarn starring Sam, The Living Legend. Inspired by my love of the sea and nature, the stories draw on memories of school days and childhood adventures, the people I've met and the yarns I've heard throughout my life. Themes include courage, friendship, respect, trust, disappointment, patience and love. Solitude is often at the heart of the story; those folk who live alone - whether by choice or circumstance - and how they find solace. Characters battle on alone, find solace in nature, and take heart from the support of friends. The Eagle sees a woman wait a life-time for the 'right' person before she can relinquish the reigns at last. In The Eel the 'right' person has been gone a life-time, but peace might at last be salvaged from this loss. In both Mary's Treasures and The Little Bird older women fight for their independence in two very different stories. Kirsty is a teenage girl who 'dares, ' but what exactly has she won? In The Return a teenage girl has suffered both loss and joy. Spring begins with the promise of romance, which comes to nothing, but there is still optimism. The Back Block - my story about pig hunting - is the quintessential 'coming of age' story (Contains gruesome incident). Is Saturday Morning in Suburbia the story about the disappointment of a life lived to suburban rules and expectations only to discover, too late, that life might have been lived differently? Or is it the story about a man who will redeem himself in the last few weeks of his life? Excerpts: Kirsty The morning was hot. It was in your face heat scooped up by the wind, heavy with the smells of the rush hour traffic, coming straight at us; hot. The road was already starting to melt and the cars whizzing past, sprayed out stinky black tar. Yesterday had been hot, too. But today was going to boil. The Back Block But it was Charlie's eyes that held people. As brown and dark and slippery as the river, they caught at a man when he wasn't expecting it. Made you listen. Made you believe the stories even though you knew they were mostly wild exaggeration. I was no exception. That was why I went with him that day. Wild pigs. He'd seen them, out beyond the back block. Huge beasts "with great ugly tusks that'd rip a man in half if he didn't watch it and I'd better have my wits about me and be prepared to make a run for it and could I climb a tree in my boots and did I have a decent knife?" I assured Charlie I was fit, (at seventeen, nearly eighteen and hadn't I just done six hay paddocks?) and there wasn't a tree standing I couldn't climb. And I had the best knife out. My uncle had sent it from England. So we went. Tramping out through miles of dusty dry bush, with the brown bracken crunching underfoot and the musty, peppery smell of the bush thick around us and the fantails diving about our heads, all the way out to where the giant pigs roamed. The Return The concrete was grey and unfriendly beneath my feet, an impassive spectator of my return. People brushed by me, but I didn't look at them. I wasn't yet ready to exchange smiles and nods of recognition, or talk to old friends. "You can't go back," Mum had said. "Nothing stays the same. People change. You make new friends." Perhaps she was right, but I had to find out for myself. The Eel I parked the car by the mailbox and got out. For a while I stood, listening. After the hum of jet engines and the noise of the car motor, the silence of the countryside made my ears ring. I'd traveled nearly three days to get here, and it didn't seem real.
