This story is extracted from a work-in-progress, Tender Prey: The Life and Times of Nick Cave. The author would like to dedicate it to the memory of Bryan Wellington (1957- 2013), whose assistance was invaluable.
'‘One of the many things I regret about writing And the Ass Saw the Angel (1989) was that I didn’t set it in Australia. It could just as easily be set in Wangaratta rather than an imaginary part of the American South. I don’t know why I didn’t do that. I wish I had. For sure that book comes from growing up in the country, from living a life in country Australia. It’s not from listening to murder ballads. The river was the sacred place of my childhood and everything happened down there.' (Introduction)
Epigraph: ‘They’re whispering his name across this disappearing land’ – ‘Red Right Hand’, Nick Cave.
This story is extracted from a work-in-progress, Tender Prey: The Life and Times of Nick Cave. The author would like to dedicate it to the memory of Bryan Wellington (1957- 2013), whose assistance was invaluable.