Paper Daises
About this ebook
'one of the most powerful books I've read in years' - Virginia Haussegger
At Christmas, 1900, university student Berylda Jones is heading home from Sydney to Bathurst, and with customary reluctance, for 'home' is where she and her sister Greta live in quiet terror, under the control of their sadistic Uncle Alec.
Berylda has a plan this time, though, to free herself and Greta from Alec for good - if she can only find the courage to execute it.
On New Year's Eve, that plan begins to take fire. Just as Alec tightens his grip on the sisters, a stranger arrives at their gate - Ben Wilberry, a botanist in search of a particular native wildflower, with his friend, the artist Cosmo Thompson.
So begins a journey that will take them all deep into the rugged wilderness of the old gold rush country of Hill End in search of a means to cure an unspeakable evil.
Set at the dawn of Federation and the coming of the Women's Vote, Paper Daisies is an Australian gothic tale of murder and misogyny. A story of one woman's determination to see justice done, and the man who clears her path along the way.
About the author
Kim is a writer of Australian fiction, author of eleven novels – Black Diamonds, This Red Earth, The Blue Mile, Paper Daisies, Wild Chicory, Jewel Sea, Lady Bird & The Fox, Sunshine, Walking, Her Last Words and The Truth & Addy Loest – tales of passion, politics and history, of ordinary people living through extraordinary times in the land Kim calls home.
Her latest novel, The Truth & Addy Loest, was published in February 2021, and is presently working on another. She is always working on another novel, and occasionally a short story, one of which, ‘Messerschmitt’, appears in the Hope Prize anthology, or a novella, one of which, ‘The Rat Catcher’, was shortlisted for Viva la Novella 2021.
When Kim is not writing, she is reading. In real life Kim is a book editor, better known on that side of the page as Kim Swivel, and regularly reviews for The Newtown Review of Books, too.
Raised in Sydney in a house that was humble except for its library and dinner-table debating style, Kim was always going to do wordy type things myself, and do them her own way. Home today is Central West New South Wales, where she is daily grateful to share a small slice of rolling green-and-gold Wiradjuri country with her muse de bloke, Deano, two cats and some chickens, and occasionally the kids when they come home to graze.
