Dear Reader

Set against Australia’s searing droughts and fires, a son’s search for his alcoholic father and the lies that kept them apart becomes a reckoning with how addiction, hardship and loss shaped them all.

The genesis of this story is embedded in the Australian landscape and the vineyard which forged my love for nature.

Embers of Drought—first titled Under a Vacant Sky—was written as a poetic processing of grief at the loss of the family vineyard in the Upper Hunter Valley during the Tinderbox Drought of 2017-2020. It became an unintentional commentary on climate change and the strength of a nation’s resilience. Personal poems metamorphosed into short stories of fictional people enduring the Millennium and Tinderbox Droughts, and the Currowan fire and later emerged as a novel. The first full draft of Embers of Drought in novel form was in verse, continuing on from its poetic roots. Having subjected my Mum to reading this in full, I realised the market for such readership was small. And hence a message I wished to convey would be boxed in. So came the fourth incarnation striping out many of the lyrical lines to create the novel that you read today.

From its inception it became clear that I was wanting to bring the plight of rural communities to the attention of those further removed from such experiences. To be a voice for those on the land. To say, ‘I see you. I hear you. And you are not alone’. Having had the privilege of life in a city and a taste of life on a rural property I have an insight into hardships many in suburbia don’t fully comprehend. I have numerous memories of our only water being a small cube brought from Sydney, with no water to wash grime off our bodies. A small container in the hand basin reused to wash hands for days, with water so filthy it was part soil and a gift to the struggling geranium in the shade of the porch.

Embers of Drought is a record of events that—though fictionalised—serve to remind of what we have endured and survived. What we will face in a future affected by a changing climate. And further, to spark conversation about that change and the role we play in our environment.

It is also an exploration on intergenerational trauma, alcohol addiction and the effects on families and communities.