Book description
In 1913, when she was 54 years old, Daisy Bates went to live in the
deserts of South Australia. And there she stayed, with occasional
interruptions, for almost 30 years.
In Daisy Bates in the Desert Julia Blackburn explores the
ancient and desolate landscape where Ms Bates says she was most happy.
She fuses her own imagination and experience with that of Daisy Bates,
unitl she seems to be recalling this other life as it it were her own.
Julia Blackburn has written five books of non-fiction -
Charles Waterton
,
The
Emperor's Last Island
,
Daisy Bates in the Desert
,
Old Man Goya
and
With Billie
- a family memoir,
The Three of Us
, which won the 2009 J. R. Ackerley Award, and two novels,
The Book
of Colour
and
The Leper's Companions
, both of which were shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She is the author
of seventeen short stories specially commisioned by BBC Radio, a
selection of which were published in
My Animals and Other Family,
and four radio plays, including
The Spellbound Horses
.
