Water speaks to Kayla as if rivers run in her veins. From her first days at her grandmother’s side, Kayla learns to trust this connection and the wisdom it brings. She crosses Australia, helping source and heal the waterways, until the work leaves her exhausted and overwhelmed. Seeking the truth of the dreaming that has always been with her, Kayla traces the mystery of her gift through her maternal line to the waters of Newfoundland. She must look to where she has always found courage, in the strength of women and the path of her ancestors, to follow her calling.
A mystical, thoughtful meditation on our relationship to nature and how to find strength and hope in a damaged world.
Francesca Cairns
About the author
Francesca Cairns has lived and travelled in many remote and rural environments including Central Australia, the Tasmanian highlands, and Newfoundland. She has worked in Aboriginal childcare, as a flower farmer and a photographer, in disabilities theatre, and was Australia’s first female grader driver in the 1970s, earning her a spot in the Women’s Museum of Australia.
Her first novel, Drawing from the Well (Brolga Publishing, 2005), is set in South Australia’s outback.
Having raised her two sons on a rural homestead in the Otways in south-western Victoria, Fran presently resides on a river in north-west Lutruwita / Tasmania with her soulmate, Nettie, stewarding 33 acres of natural forest and waterways. She is currently working on her third novel.