Miranda. Miranda – passionate and eccentric; artistic and assertive; her life dominated by her urge to sculpt – rescues a castaway from the reef. Driven by her visions she longs to use him as her model. In collision with her bigoted husband and an intolerant society, she finds only those from the freer world of the sea – the lighthouse keeper and the American whaler, an ‘honest murderer’, – bring her hope and the respect she craves.
Fishing for Strawberries. This is the first book in my Jerusha Braddon trilogy.
“My name is Jerusha. It means “perfect wife” which is quite a joke given my lack of domesticity.”
Conceivably the first Australian woman painter, Jerusha Braddon, daughter of a lighthouse keeper on the shipwreck coast, grows up on an island. In this lonely world her companion is a convict’s son. Her talent as a painter is shaped by her parents’ conflicts and her grandmother’s fantasies. Surrounded by people exiled from the homes of their birth, she seeks her own Australian identity by painting vivid, original sea-scapes and scenes of the bush. She assists in the rescue of an imprisoned Aboriginal, who she sees as an exile in his own country, and a posse of men attack her. Her paintings then become an impassioned plea for justice. But in the face of community vilification she is driven to consider pursuing her talents in Melbourne.
“My name is Jerusha. It means “perfect wife” which is quite a joke given my lack of domesticity.”
Conceivably the first Australian woman painter, Jerusha Braddon, daughter of a lighthouse keeper on the shipwreck coast, grows up on an island. In this lonely world her companion is a convict’s son. Her talent as a painter is shaped by her parents’ conflicts and her grandmother’s fantasies. Surrounded by people exiled from the homes of their birth, she seeks her own Australian identity by painting vivid, original sea-scapes and scenes of the bush. She assists in the rescue of an imprisoned Aboriginal, who she sees as an exile in his own country, and a posse of men attack her. Her paintings then become an impassioned plea for justice. But in the face of community vilification she is driven to consider pursuing her talents in Melbourne.