Fiction

'Is marriage just a series of texts about where the children are and whether we need milk until one of you dies?'

Her husband was controversial. He was in the press, in the courts and in prison. Her husband was charismatic, voluble and irrepressible. He survived shipwreck, ruin and slander. Her husband was an entrepreneur, industrialist and pioneer. We continue to drink his beer; we still attend his theatre. His legacy is concrete. His place in history is secure.

But this is not his story, but the imagined story of his wife, Sophia Degraves.

Ren lives alone on the remote frontier of a country devastated by a coup. High on the forested slopes, she survives by hunting and trading-and forgetting.

Lucy and Jem live on the Tasman Peninsula near Eaglehawk Neck, where Lucy is recovering from major surgery.