Ash Rain

Corrie Hosking

PB 224 PP 210 x 135 1862546347 $22.95 Fiction APN 9781862546349 Wakefield Press

‘Corrie Hosking’s is a unique new voice. Her prose sizzles and burns. It is unforgettable.’  – Eva Sallis

A bushfire in Dell’s childhood still haunts her. She dreams up new starts, but her spilling stories cannot over-write the past.

Evvie dances into Dell’s life. She has run as far as she can from her family, but the ocean keeps calling her back.

Evvie’s daughter, Luce, is most at home in the company of creatures. All she wants is her collection of bugs and a guinea pig for Christmas.

Dell meets Patrick in the pub, but he’s going back to Scotland. Her life finally rupturing, Dell follows. She leaves a hole that Evvie and Luce struggle to fill. They must find each other again, without Dell. And Dell must discover how love works half a world away.

Winner of the Festival Award for an Unpublished Manuscript in 2002 Ash Rain explores the corners and crevices where love can grow in unexpected ways.

Corrie Hosking grew up in the Adelaide Hills, where she now lives with her partner, Adam, daughter, Ada, dog, chooks and geese. Corrie’s short stories appear in Iron Lace, Working with the Stories of Women’s Lives and Feast. She is completing work for a PhD in Creative Writing and a Bachelor of Social Work degree, and is looking forward to the birth of her second child.

‘Ash Rain is a strong, beautiful novel about troubled and wonderful people who brim with vitality. Hosking has managed that unusual and winning combination of poetic, evocative prose with a compelling narrative: settings made vividly present to the reader’s senses, and characters full of pain and unreason who remain lodged in the memory, each with a past and a future beyond the pages of the book.’ – Gillian Dooley, Adelaide Review

‘Ash Rain is a skilfully crafted novel, full of symbolism and sustained imagery, of the essence of place fused with the essence of person. It is to Hosking’s credit that the skilfulness of Ash Rain does not overpower the narrative, and that she avoids the over-writing, over-explaining and other excesses often associated with first novels. Instead, the narrative engages and leaves the reader to unravel stories and draw conclusions.’ – Debra Zott, Flinders University

‘. . . deeply emotional tone that recalls the best work of Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman (landscapes of the mind, complex and inexpressible bonds, Dark-Side-musings dragged in the light).’ – Rip It Up