Author(s): Jennifer Down, Thea Astley

Fiction

"Beautifully written." --Publishers Weekly

"Intelligent, fresh, and new." --Kirkus

First published in 1990. Winner of the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction. Young Australian Belle, the daughter of an American musician, looks back on the people and forces that shaped her life. Researching in the archives Belle discovers the long-dead Gaden Lockyer, a colonial pioneer in Jericho Flats, and becomes obsessed. Belle's quest for Lockyer is her way of coming to terms with the past--her mother, "a drummer in her own all-women's group"; her absent American father; and her ineffectual husband. Astley's satire at its sharpest and most entertaining.