Cirrus@Austlit

'Nina’s waters have broken early.

'She knows it’s a girl.

'She doesn’t know if she wants it.

'Nina lies in a pool of her own amniotic fluid in Darwin Hospital, alone and paralysed by indecision. Slowly losing her grip on reality, she is visited by her best friend who dreams of a different life for her, and an apparition of her mother as a young woman who will do anything to be forgiven. And maybe that thing slithering around in her ultrasound isn’t a baby at all…

'Ciella Williams’ haunting writing balances power, trauma, and unlikely friendships with care and humour in this funny and heartbreaking instant Australian classic.

'Conceived just days after giving birth to her own daughter, Williams’ Hush cuts through our cultural narratives about motherhood – instead diving into the real fears and harsh realities of young women faced with this transformation.'

Source: Brown's Mart.

I am calling her Amber because amber is my favourite stone. In truth, it is not a stone at all. Technically, it is fossilised tree resin that has withstood all kinds of weather and woe, the likes of which would normally cause sap to disintegrate. Amber resists decay.

'I am calling her Amber to give her something precious. To remind her of what the world has to offer. She knew this once, more keenly than most. But she has forgotten. I am hoping to remind her that the world’s beauty isn’t gone. That beauty exists inside things, sometimes trapped, often obscured.

'When Amber returns to her home in the Australian desert one year after her brother’s death, her hope is to move on from her grief, to start again. Invited to do some work in a remote Aboriginal community, she relishes the opportunity to return to country she loves so deeply. She hadn’t realised her friend Andrew had a reason to ask her to come back.

'She begins a three-day road trip on unsealed roads that link a constellation of Aboriginal communities. From the outset, it is as if she has been picked up willy willy on a windless day, and must be carried to the end of it —until the wind decides to drop. During this adventure, her composure is undone by a series of encounters, observations, the country itself, and she learns that grief takes its own time.

'Told like memoir, spun like myth, this is a philosophical tale about coming to terms with the death of a loved one. About our way of dealing with death, and the offerings of another culture. It is about home, and how this is found in people as much as place.' (Publication summary)

'Leni Shilton offers us a woman’s exploration of loss and survival in the unforgiving and beautiful landscape of central Australia. Bertha Strehlow, overshadowed by her anthropologist husband’s achievements, was a woman of integrity and a brilliant observer and connector of people in settings such as the Great Sandy Desert over many years of endurance. In this volume, Leni Shilton restores to her a voice.'  (Publication summary)