by Patricia Holland

… contemporary Australian fiction

Everyone controls Sophie. She can’t walk and she can’t talk, but behind her disability hides a keen intelligence. Living on The Styx River cattle station with her father and a nanny, Sophie is acutely aware that she is a non-person. She feels as voiceless and isolated as the wallabies of The Wall, an eerie wilderness of basalt lava tubes forming a natural stone labyrinth that protects its remote lushness from anyone foolish enough to wander in. How can one impossibly disabled girl who can’t help herself, help save the lives of others?

The Styx by Patricia Holland—available now (stockists).

Ask at your favourite bookshop (or a bookshop that is handy).

• Walking and Wallowing

  

  Kinka Beach on dusk (it was much darker and scarier than it looks, hey)

  There are some people I know – V and C and A and J – who enter the water alone. Some of them swim alone in the wild after dark. Tonight, entering the water, the sea, just on dark, alone, fully dressed and wallowing was delicious.

  Walking and wallowing alone after dark on the incoming tide, Mary kept nipping. She was excited, but she always worries about the water, especially when its deep, especially when its dark. She knew it was out of character. I heard that the sea holds magical mineral properties and is willing to share them. It’s good that way, the sea, generous.