Eta Draconis
About this ebook
Together, Elora and her older sister, Vivienne, set out by road for the city and the upcoming semester. The relationship between them is fractured and fading, turned upside down by Eta Draconis: the violent meteor shower that has rained across Earth since the beginning of their adolescence. In a land scarred by craters and shockwaves, to travel anywhere is to risk everything. As the showering intensifies and their way forward becomes threatened, the sisters are forced to confront their relationship and recalibrate their hopes for the future. Do they return home or press on in the face of the meteors? Can life ever be normal with the world crashing down all around you?
Eta Draconis is an epic story about two resilient sisters who are determined to live their life in a world on the brink of destruction. Winner of the 2022 Dorothy Hewett Award, Brendan Ritchie’s Eta Draconis is timely, hopeful and full of suspense.
'Life on earth undergoes a complex change as meteorites begin to rain down from the dying star Eta Draconis. The world does not collapse, but old certainties disappear and a new mood falls over human societies. A road narrative set in Western Australia’s southwest, Eta Draconis follows two sisters as they survive in these complicated times. A poetic and compelling novel for the COVID moment.' — Dorothy Hewett Award judges
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About the author
Brendan Ritchie is an early-career novelist and academic from the south-coast of WA. In 2015 he published his debut novel Carousel and was awarded a PhD in Creative Writing. Carousel was critically acclaimed and described by the Sydney Morning Herald as ‘the sort of thing that might happen if Kafka wrote a script for Big Brother.’ The sequel, Beyond Carousel, was released in 2016 and Brendan has also published poetry and non-fiction in several notable journals and collections. Eta Draconis is his third book and the winner of the 2022 Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. In addition to writing, Brendan coordinates an academic enabling program at Edith Cowan University.
