by Joy Dettman
‘Good girl,’ he said in her head. He did.
She gets tears in her eyes as she stands looking hard at the photograph, trying to make it do it again. It doesn’t, but she knows he’s come home to her. He’s here. He’s in this kitchen. He’s in all of them. Not a lot of root, but a whole heap of healthy cabbage.
She walks to the stove and opens the firebox, prods in wood, giving her eyes an excuse to water. The smoke rushes out, and for a moment she is wrapped in a cocoon of smoke and late sunlight.
She is fourteen and three months and she’s got a bit of an ache in her tummy – it’s a sort of weighty ache. Different. Probably women’s business – and it’s probably about time. Maybe fate was waiting until she had a mother – not that Lori hasn’t known all about that women’s stuff since she was six years old.
‘So what?’ she says and she wipes at her eyes. ‘So what?’
The brothers look at her, don’t understand.
A pretty girl, their sister. They know that she made them a family, kept them a family. She is of them, but not one of them, female, unknown, but well known.
She is the air of this room, the life of this room. She is in all of the odours of the room. She is in the woodsmoke and in the onions Jamesy is cutting up to toss into the stew. She is everywhere.
She is woman, Henry’s daughter, who makes the world for them a not too bad place.
MORE BESTSELLING FICTION AVAILABLE FROM PAN MACMILLAN
Joy Dettman
Mallawindy
Ann Burton was born on a river bank the night her father tried to burn their house down.
Six years later her sister Liza disappears while they are staying at their uncle’s property. What Ann sees that day robs her of her memory and her speech.
A stroke of unexpected humanity releases Ann from her world of silence, and she escapes her anguished childhood, finding love and a new life away from Mallawindy.
But there is no escape from the Burton family and its dark secrets. Ann must return to Mallawindy and confront the past if she is ever to be set free.
‘We ride the crests and troughs of the Burtons’ 30-year history with open mouths and saucer eyes . . . Dettman is an adept storyteller’
THE AGE
‘A highly competent and confident debut novel’
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
‘A compelling story, well told . . . it holds promise of further enthralling fiction from its author’
CANBERRA TIMES
‘A stunning debut; a rich and engrossing read; a tale of page-turning suspense and mystery; a postmortem of family ties; all this and more, Mallawindy will grab you hook, line and sinker’
QUEENSLAND TIMES
Joy Dettman
Jacaranda Blue
From the best-selling author of Mallawindy, comes a tale of dark secrets, shameful lies and unexpected salvation.
For forty-four years Stella Templeton has been a dutiful daughter and a good citizen, living in Maidenville, population 2,800, a town where nothing happens. Until one hot summer afternoon . . .
An ugly act has lifted the respectable skirts of Maidenville and mystery starts to surround the daughter of the local minister. Then the disappearance of a sixteen-year-old boy adds to the neighbourhood’s confusion. Does something sinister lurk behind the neatly trimmed hedges and white picket fences that divide this sleepy town?
No one comes close to knowing the horrifying truth – but after forty-four years of self denial and duty, Stella Templeton is finally beginning to blossom.
‘ . . . a gripping small-town mystery . . . Dettman is brilliant at depicting the seemingly inconsequential murmurs of small-town life . . . ’
SUN-HERALD
‘ . . . a pleasure to read . . . ’
CANBERRA TIMES
‘The only disappointment in this book is reaching the end.’
HERALD SUN
Joy Dettman
Goose Girl
Sally De Rooze is almost thirty. She has survived the accident that killed her father and brothers. Her mother never forgave her for that. But she survived her mother too. Surviving is what she does best.
Farmer Ross Bertram, who offers her his acres and safety, is the answer for a while. Until he starts pushing for a wedding. Sally wants . . . wants more. Wants to know great love. Wants to find herself. One year. That’s what she wants. One year of freedom in the big, bad city.
Her survival skills are tested in the urban sprawl and she discovers more about herself than she had ever dared to imagine.
From the bestselling author of Mallawindy and Jacaranda Blue, comes a moving story about being set free.
‘ . . . a can’t-put-it down story’
NW
‘Goose Girl is not just a story to read about – it’s one to think about’
THE EXAMINER
‘Dettman knows how to tell a story’
THE SUNDAY AGE
Joy Dettman
Yesterday’s Dust
Only the strong survive Mallawindy. Some get away, but even they fight to escape the town’s dark legacy.
Jack Burton escaped. For six years he has been missing, presumed dead. Still, memories of him continue to dominate the lives of his family.
His wife, Ellie, stands at the gate each night, waiting for him to return – until a man’s body is found.
Once again, the Burtons’ turbulent history will be unearthed . . .
‘At the heart of this absorbing tale . . . is the writer’s ability to interweave the country-town propensity for rumour and allegation into a gothic narrative . . . Yesterday’s Dust is lightened by its pinpoint descriptions of people and places, as well as the occasional touch of humour, some of it with a country flavour and some delightfully black’
AUSTRALIAN BOOKSELLER & PUBLISHER
‘Is there such a thing as winter beach reading? If so, Joy Dettman’s Yesterday’s Dust fits the bill nicely . . . an author who’s well in tune with her subject and audience’
WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN
Joy Dettman
The Seventh Day
The world as it was has been all but destroyed. Those few who survived the Great Ending are now ruled by an all-powerful group known as the Chosen, whose walled city encloses a diminishing population riddled with plague and threatened with extinction. Desperate to repopulate, the Chosen send searchers to capture every surviving female still living in the wild lands beyond the city for their new breeding stations.
There is a girl with a name neither of her companions can remember, who is found by the Chosen’s searchers living on a remote property. Since then, she has known little more than the life they enforce – a life dominated by their breeding program and genetic experimentation – while they immunise her and prepare to take her to their city.
Then one afternoon a son of one of the Chosen arrives at the girl’s farm, a boy who has fled from a life that he has come to find unbearable. His arrival sets in motion a chain of events which change the girl’s life in ways she could not possibly have imagined – offering her a chance to regain the unthinkable – freedom.
