Author(s): Robbie Arnott

Aust Fiction

In the heat of a long summer Ned hunts rabbits in a river valley, hoping the pelts will earn him enough money to buy a small boat. His two brothers are away at war, their whereabouts unknown. His father and older sister struggle to hold things together on the family orchard, Limberlost.  Desperate to ignore it all - to avoid the future rushing towards him - Ned dreams of open water.

As his story unfolds over the following decades, we see how Ned's choices that summer come to shape the course of his life, the fate of his family and the future of the valley, with its seasons of death and rebirth.

The third novel by the award-winning author of Flames and The Rain Heron, Limberlost is an extraordinary chronicle of life and land: of carnage and kindness, blood ties and love.

MATILDA BOOKSHOP REVIEW

Haunted by the passing of time and the specter of a great whale, Limberlost is the fable-like story of the summer that gentle Ned West spends waiting for his brothers to return from war, and the ripples it casts across the rest of his life. This is a summer of rabbits and quolls, of trees and rivers, of building and becoming a man. The quiet wisdom Arnott conveys in this potent and exquisitely crafted depiction of the delicate relationship between people and place will stay with me for some time. Georgia