Women of the Cataract - Paperback

by Merlene Fawdry (Author)

Launceston's iconic Caretaker's Cottage, nestled into the rock face overlooking the South Esk River, is the perfect setting for an Artists and Writers in Residence Program. For Clare Towns it offers a new beginning and a means of escaping Levi, a cyber stalker with a narcissistic personality disorder who has shadowed her for the past six years. Re-inventing herself as Frances Ashbury, writer, poet and blogger, she moves to the cottage to research the novel she's been writing in her mind for almost a decade. However, despite its peaceful façade, she discovers the cottage is occupied by the restless spirits of women and children who have died in the river over the previous hundred and fifty years, a living history that intrudes on her days and fills her nights with confusion, until she is unable to separate the past from the present. They are relying on her to set them free, she trusts them to save her when Levi tracks her down, while the cottage conspires to claim her as one the Women of the Cataract.

Author Biography

Merlene Fawdry was born in Tasmania and now lives in rural Victoria. In 2008, she was writer-in-residence at the Caretaker's Cottage in Launceston, situated at the entrance to the mystical Cataract Gorge, producing a book of poetry, Discourse with Walls. In 2014, reflecting on this experience, she began writing this novel, set in the cottage and immediate environs. Her other major works include, The Scent of a Mother's Kiss, Seth, Villains and Valour and The hidden Risks. Her latest writing project, work of non-fiction:125 Years of Australian Women Potters and China Painters, with biographical information and maker's marks for approximately 2000 potters, ceramicists and china decorators since the late 19th century, is to be released in 2018