Best-selling novelist Darry Fraser to visit Murray Bridge

Historical fiction novelist Darry Fraser will give an author talk at Murray Bridge Library on Tuesday.

Ms Fraser will be promoting her new book, The Forthright Woman, set in the Flinders Ranges.

Ms Fraser, who lives on Kangaroo Island, typically writes about 1890s rural Australia.

Her first novel, Daughter of the Murray, was set on the River Murray, where she spent part of her childhood.

“From an early age, the countryside grabbed me,” she said.

“When we went to live on the river in Swan Hill, that great blue sky and the big body of water – there’s just some magic for me, and there always has been.”

A self-described technophobe, Ms Fraser said she loved escaping the modern world through historical fiction.

“Writing historical fiction is certainly a form of time travel,” she said.

“Without wanting to be put in a looney bin, when I’m in the zone, I hear the saddle-leather creaking and the clip clop of horses’ hooves.”

Ms Fraser said her stories were “fiction set in history.”

Her new novel, The Forthright Woman, is also centred around a real cattle and sheep station, Kanyaka Station, between Quorn and Hawker.

“Before a drought happened, it was a massive station in the day,” Ms Fraser said.

“When you travel that way, you start to see a shadow side of civilisation.”

The Flinders Ranges atmosphere excited her imagination enough to set a novel there.

“The silence and calm of the Flinders Ranges whispered to me,” she said.

Ms Fraser’s novels include a mixture of love and action and have broad appeal to readers.

“I’ve built a readership which expects a relationship to occur in my novels, and I always shoot the baddies: I love doing that,” she said.

“I’ve had husbands and wives contact me; the wives pick up the novel, but the husbands also can’t get enough.”

Support and meet a South Australian author, and check out her new book.

Please contact the Murray Bridge Library on 8539 1175 to book your place.

Win a copy of The Forthright Woman

Publishers HarperCollins have promised Murray Bridge News several copies of Darry Fraser’s The Forthright Woman to give away.

For your chance to win a copy, tell us in the comments below: where would you set a historical novel if you were writing one?

We’ll give away as many copies as we receive when we get them, and contact the winners by email.

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